For a while there, trying to find a decent DirectX 10-capable graphics card for somewhere around two hundred bucks was a tough assignment. Nvidia had its GeForce 8600 GTS, but that card didn't really perform well enough to measure up similarly priced DX9 cards. On the Radeon side of things, AMD had, well, pretty much nothing. You could buy a cheap, slow DX10-ready Radeon or a faster one with a formidable price tag. Between them, crickets chirped as tumbleweeds blew by.
Happily, the GPU makers saw fit to remedy this situation, and in the past few months, we've gained an embarrassment of riches in video card choices between about $170 and $250, including the screaming GeForce 8800 GT and a pair of solid values in the Radeon HD 3850 and 3870. Now, that embarrassment is becoming positively scandalous, as Nvidia unveils yet another new GPU aimed at graphics cards below the $200 mark: the GeForce 9600 GT.
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*Review: Tech Report (
http://techreport.com/articles.x/14168)*
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