The XFX 9600 GT 700M XXX, like all 9600 GT cards, is much more powerful than the 8600 GT. There was really no need to include 8600 series cards in our chart, as they're just not in the same class. We chose to compare it against several other 9660 GT cards instead.
Testbed:
Motherboard:
EVGA 680i SLI (Ustupio EVGA)
Processor:
Intel Core 2 Duo 6800 Extreme edition (Ustupio Intel)
Memory:
OCZ FlexXLC PC2 9200 5-5-5-18 (Ustupio OCZ)
na testu CL5-5-5-15-CR2T 1066MHz at 2.2V
PSU:
OCZ Silencer 750 Quad Black ( Ustupio OCZ)
Hard disk:
Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 80GB SATA (Ustupio Seagate)
CPU-Cooler:
Freezer 7 Pro (Ustupio Artic Cooling)
Case Fans:
Artic Cooling - Artic Fan 12 PWM
Artic Cooling - Artic Fan 8 PWM
Futuremark tests
Thanks to its higher clocks the XFX 9600 GT 700M outperformed the reference clocked 9600 GT cards, but it was still slower than MSI's and Zotac's overclocked 9600 GT cards. Further overclocking gives us a 5.6 percent performance boost in 3Dmark06, which results in a 12 percent performance advantage over reference clocked cards. In fact, after we overclocked it to 760MHz, the XFX card's score was comparable to that of the 8800GT. However, in game tests we rarely saw results close to the 8800GT.
Game tests
F.E.A.R. loved Zotac's 9600 GT, but the XFX was on par with MSI's 730MHz 9600GT. Overclocking at 1600x1200 got us another 10 FPS on the XFX card. The Geforce 9600 GT outperformed ATI's Radeon HD3870 in this test.
XFX fares well against other 9600 GT cards. It's around 11 percent faster than the reference card and the the MSI's 9600GT clocked at 730MHz is around 4 percent better. Since we could easily push the XFX card all the way up to 770MHz, we were able to push the framerate by another 10 percent in some resolutions.
In Crysis, the XFX scores close to a reference clocked 8800 GT and, but this just shows that a 9600 GT is still no match for a stock clocked 8800GT. At 700MHz, XFX's 9600 GT 700M XXX is close to other overclocked 9600 GT cards. The new Catalyst 8.3 driver is out and it should give ATI cards a 10-15 percent performance increase in Crysis, but only under Vista.
"Bad in Antialiasingu" seems to be the motto of Radeon cards these days and we can see why in Half Life 2, Episode Two.
Conclusion
The XFX 9600 GT 700M XXX is a great replacement for any 8600 series card and it's a good choice if you're looking for a low-priced and fast card. With an overclocked 700MHz core XFX's 9600 GT performs well compared to the cards in our charts. It was easy to overclock it to 770MHz too.
The Geforce 9600 GT is no match for the 8800 GT, which is still one step beyond. However, the 9600 GT can easily take on ATI's HD3870, so if you prefer an Nvidia card over ATI, you've got a choice in this price segment.
XFX's referenced clocked 9600 GT 650M is priced at €145, while the 680M and 700M go for €145 and €155, respectively. Considering that XFX's 700M has the highest GPU clock and that it comes with a rather good game, it starts to sound like the best deal of the lot.
We can recommend it to all gamers looking for an affordable card capable of running most contemporary games at resolutions of up to 1600x1200. In this particular price segment you won't easily find a more powerful card.