Company Of Heroes

Resolution Comparison

In Company Of Heroes (DirectX 9 render path), the NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT was slower than the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB and the GeForce 8800 GT. Even at 1600 x 1200, it was slightly (3%) slower than the GeForce 8800 GT running at 1920 x 1200.

On the other hand, it was much faster than the ATI Radeon HD 3870 and the GeForce 8600 GTS. Surprisingly, the Radeon HD 3870 performed very poorly this time. It was as though it was vsync-limited although we took care to disable vsync. We will be retesting the card again later. The questionable results of the Radeon HD 3870 aside, it is very nice to see that the GeForce 9600 GT was twice as fast as the GeForce 8600 GTS.

Anti-Aliasing Comparison

The NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GTS is no competitor for the brawn of the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB and the GeForce 8800 GT. Even without anti-aliasing, it was only as fast as the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB running at 8xQ AA! Still, it was no performance slouch as it gamely maintained a high frame rate up to 16xQ AA where it managed an average frame rate of 38.8 fps. Not bad!

DirectX Comparison

Switching from the DirectX 9 render path to DirectX 10 saw a massive drop (50-55 %) in frame rate for all graphics cards in the comparison. At 1280 x 1024, the NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT was slightly faster than the GeForce 8800 GT running at 1600 x 1200.