Test System Setup

Processor(s): Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 3GHz (333MHz x 9)
Cooling: Corsair Nautilus500 (Supplied by Corsair) with Arctic Cooling MX-2 Thermal Compound (Supplied by Arctic Cooling)
Motherboard(s): GIGABYTE X48-DQ6 (Supplied by GIGABYTE)
Memory: 2 X 1GB Kingston PC6400 DDR-2 3-3-3-10 (KHX6400D2ULK2/2G) (Supplied by Kingston)
Hard Disk(s): Seagate 250GB 7200RPM SATA-2 7200.10 (Supplied by Seagate)
Operating System: Windows XP Professional SP2, Windows Vista
Drivers: Catalyst 8.2, Forceware 174.11 (9600GT Win XP), Forceware 171.16 (9600GT Win Vista)

The line-up of cards today is very simple; we’ve got the pre-overclocked Galaxy 9600GT which was the first 9600GT based card we looked at and the HD 3870 from ASUS which carries with it stock clocks. What we find is that a stock clocked 9600GT generally performs below the HD 3870 most of the time. An average overclocked 9600GT will perform on par with the HD 3870, sometimes better though sometimes worse, but a decent overclocked 9600GT tends to outperform the HD 3870 the majority of the time.

The MSI clocks look pretty good, so let’s see if we can get it consistently beating out the HD 3870 like a decent clocked card will.


3DMark06

Version and / or Patch Used: Build 110
Developer Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com
Product Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com/products/3dmark06/
Buy It Here





3DMark06 is the very latest version of the “Gamers Benchmark” from FutureMark. The newest version of 3DMark expands on the tests in 3DMark05 by adding graphical effects using Shader Model 3.0 and HDR (High Dynamic Range lighting) which will push even the best DX9 graphics cards to the extremes.

3DMark06 also focuses on not just the GPU but the CPU using the AGEIA PhysX software physics library to effectively test single and Dual Core processors.




Off the mark we can see the overclock on offer from the MSI 9600GT has put it ahead of the HD 3870 at all resolutions. It of course manages to beat out the lower clocked Galaxy 9600GT as you would expect.