There’s no other word for it – we’ve been *inundated* with videocard test samples the past week-and-a-half, the majority of which consists of the brand new 9600 GTs, a couple of 3000 series Radeons, and some of the first top-of-the-line cards that are just becoming available this very week. Before we give you the lowdown and a benchmark foundation for all the important videocard generations covered recently, we’ll lay it out here in the blog clearly so that you guys will know what to expect.

                                              If only Santa was this prolific in his gift-giving...
 

In total, we have our grubbly little hands on the following hot cards:

1.    Asus EN9600GT

2.    Leadtek 9600GT Extreme

3.    Nvidia Reference Design 9600GT

4.    Palit 9600GT Sonic (2x!!)

5.    Zotac 9600GT AMP! Edition

Plus: some cards that we won’t be able to include in our upcoming magazine compilation, including: the Gigabyte 9600GT, MSI 9600GT OC, and the Inno3d Ichill 9600GT.

Of the five that we will be including, only two are not overclocked – namely the Asus and the reference design. Asus has an overclocked version though. This new mid level series of cards will form the meat and potatoes of the comparative review of videocards we have cooking up for you.

Making a comeback, and re-validated with their inclusion in the grueling benchmark marathon conducted on the cards, are some of the hot products released in the past few months, namely the 8800GT (where we will include a stock-clocked and an overclocked version), the 8800GTS (G92 core), two vagrant 8800GTX’s (lent to us by some editors – thanks!) to provide an upper ceiling / target performance point by testing them in single and SLI modes, and to provide the opposite, our faithful reference test-bench 8600GTS – to show us just how far we’ve gone forward.

                                             The reference and the GeCube 3870 X2 cards.

Making a showing for the red team, always there to keep Nvidia on its toes (thanks, ATI) are two huge contenders – both of them based on the 3870 X2 platform. One of the two we received direct from ATI, showing off a reference design and the (huge) stock fan. We have not yet had the chance to run it through its paces, but we’re assuming for now that it is stock-clocked. We’ll know soon enough, and so will you. The other 3870 X2 is another matter entirely – two bazooka-like fans, a more compact design, and an overclock that’s (almost) through the roof – the GeCube HD3870 X2 – a formidable card that will school most, if not all of the other participants. We will be running these through the same benchmarks as the other models, with a cool twist: we will run these two dual-GPU cards in a Crossfire setup (after setting the overclock to the stock clocks) to attain what is essentially a quad GPU setup for comparison. We can’t wait.

                                             HDMI and Display Port!

We are actually unsure on whether all of the benchies we will be running will fit into the magazine article, but if space constraints prevent everything from fitting, we still have the online blog, where we will be posting the complete series anyway. So watch out and hold your breath (not for too long though – the magazine’s release not until the first week of March) for the most complete benchmark and comparison series in HWZ history – spread over the magazine and the blog. After this I’m asking for a raise and a complete overhaul of the test bench haha. More pictures to follow.

                                             The reference card looks quite menacing.

                                              A jumble of videocards.

                                             Our test bench in action.