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[umiman]

I don't understand it. Before I bought my computer, I read everywhere that the nVidia 9600 was only a mid-range card and won't blow any minds, etc etc. However, I've been able to play every single recent game on max settings with no problems. Crysis at max everything? No problem. Oblivion at max everything? No problem. Fallout 3 max everything? No problem. Call of Duty 4 max everything? No problem. Empire: Total War? Again, no problem.

Why exactly is this rated a mid-range card? By what standards do people judge high end cards? Nonexistant games? An undetectable frame-rate difference I remember a decade ago, when people said high end cards, they meant a quantum leap between the mid-range and the high-end. Nowadays, we don't have anything that can even take advantage of what the hardware can offer. What's the point?

[Darkone]

Uhhh... you're not playing crysis on max with a 9600 unless you're playing at rediculously low resolution. At ultra, you would be measuring it in seconds per frame. Its possible your settings are borked, and its not changing the actual settings.

[Puck]

Or you call 25 frames (if even) no problem.

Ever since I started to shell out for GPUs and actually went for some acceptable performance... I want and need constant 60 frames minimum 

I COULD live with 40-45 but only if those friggin games would have a FPS cap, but most of them dont have (in any convenient way) one, so you spike up to 80+ in the simpler scenes, which gets me MAJORLY annoyed. If your minimum FPS hovers around 60, it aint that bad, but still annoying.

[Peewee]

*can play crysis on 'high' settings at 1680x1050 with 9800 GT*
Though I don't get a super-duper frame rate, I play DF, so anything over 5 is playable.

[Tormy]

Why exactly is this rated a mid-range card? By what standards do people judge high end cards? Nonexistant games? An undetectable frame-rate difference I remember a decade ago, when people said high end cards, they meant a quantum leap between the mid-range and the high-end. Nowadays, we don't have anything that can even take advantage of what the hardware can offer. What's the point?

That is a good question...a typical mid-range gfx card is a factory OCed 8800gt for example. [This is my opinion..] High end cards are much more expensive. -> Example: Nvidia Geforce GTX 280+ cards.

[A_Fey_Dwarf]

I have a 9600GT as well and I have noticed it doesn't do as well as you say, but a lags out when games are on highest settings. Then again I am using a 1920 x 1080 resolution so...
e.g. I can run CoD4 on the automatic settings (I don't know the exact) with that res, 2x anti aliasing and the FPS drops only occasionally. Oblivion on the other hand... Well that lags out pretty badly, even when I turn my settings down. But that could of course be due to my cheapo processor. Haven't tried Crysis, but I have a feeling that will lag. Uniman, maybe your 9600Gt is an overclocked model, because mine certainly doesn't perform as well as you claim.

[sneakey pete]

As long as my minimum FPS is usually over 30fps or so i'm happy.

I hope this gtx285 i just bought will do that for most games in the foreseeable future. Yay for having money.

[Darkone]

Or you call 25 frames (if even) no problem.

Ever since I started to shell out for GPUs and actually went for some acceptable performance... I want and need constant 60 frames minimum 

I COULD live with 40-45 but only if those friggin games would have a FPS cap, but most of them dont have (in any convenient way) one, so you spike up to 80+ in the simpler scenes, which gets me MAJORLY annoyed. If your minimum FPS hovers around 60, it aint that bad, but still annoying.

Crysis on Ultra on anything less than a GTX280 at anything higher than 1280x1024 is closer to 3-5 fps 

But yea, a 9600GT should max out CoD4 pretty easy. Its not very demanding, as even a HD4670 can typically get high levels of detail on it. The idea of bigger cards, like my HD4830, or Peewee's 9800GT, is that they can play the vast majority of newer games at acceptable settings. E:TW can get high in everything with 4x AA at 1280x1024 and still get a good framerate on ym card... but I wouldn't want to push it higher.

A_fey_dwarf : Low-end processors have a tendancy to choke cards. In Arma2, I can take it up oto fairly high settings... but the strain on the processor to provide for the AI still keeps me at around 24 frames in a massive battle-map.

[Tormy]

As long as my minimum FPS is usually over 30fps or so i'm happy.

I hope this gtx285 i just bought will do that for most games in the foreseeable future. Yay for having money.

Don't worry, that is an excellent card. You probably don't have to buy a new one in the next 2 years. [It should be able to run all of the upcoming games @ max detail. Well I am not sure about Crysis 2. actually, we shall see... ]

[Yanlin]

I don't get it. What's with people playing at those insane resolutions? I've had a hard timing going to 1280x1024 from 1024x768! I was sure my puny 8600 GT wont be able to give me decent FPS for ANYTHING at THAT resolution!

After all, it's over half a million extra pixels to render.

(1280 * 1024) - (1024 * 768) = 524,288

Now I see you people playing at 1920x1080 (2,073,600 pixels.) which I'm assuming is a widescreen resolution (I don't have a widescreen. Didn't want one. I was used to 4:3 aspect ratio and I'll be having a hard time parting with it come due monitor replacement. I always thought that some games which don't support widescreen will look stretched instead of having a higher FOV.)

For me, the jagginess of stuff simply vanished after mere minutes of play due to immersion. My brain takes over the role of the GPU and my imagination does some AA automatically.

Incidentally, my 8600 is proving rather robust. Considering it has no fan and it's not overclocked at all.

[Peewee]

1920x1080 is a 16:10 aspect ratio. For games that don't support my resolution, I go a couple steps down to a 4:3 aspect ratio, and my 9800 GT takes care of the scaling (puts black bars on the edges to stop distortion)

[Yanlin]

Here's another logical fallacy for me. Widescreen LCDs cost less than 4:3 LCDs here.