World in Conflict Benchmark Results

The latest version of Massive's proprietary Masstech engine utilizes DX10 technology and features advanced lighting and physics effects, and allows for a full 360 degree range of camera control. Massive's MassTech engine scales down to accommodate a wide range of PC specifications, if you've played a modern PC game within the last two years, you'll be able to play World in Conflict.

World in Conflict's FPS-like control scheme and 360-degree camera make its action-strategy game play accessible to strategy fans and fans of other genres... if you love strategy, you'll love World in Conflict. If you've never played strategy, World in Conflict is the strategy game to try.

World in Conflict offers an in-game benchmark; which records the minimum, average, and maximum frame rates during the test. Very recently another hardware review website made the assertion that these tests are worthless, but we couldn't disagree more. When used to compare video cards which are dependant on the same driver, the in-game benchmark works very well and comparisons are apples-to-apples.

A cautionary word about maximum frame rates is necessary, however. Although these readings are worth noting, the maximum frame rate is nearly worthless in determining GPU power. The reason for this is simple: those maximum frame rates are collected from scenes with little to no movement and practically no graphical processing demand. Obviously this shifts the importance over to the minimum frame rate, which will indicate how smooth the performance will remain under heavy demand.

In all of our previous tests I have compared the factory overclocked Palit 9600 GT against a wide spectrum of products, but I have tried to emphasize a more direct comparison with the 8800 GS, GTS, and GT. In these final tests, I hope to see some evidence that places an importance on high amounts of vRAM, or it might just come down to price and performance in my conclusion.

First tested was the 1024x768 resolution in WiC, which relates to gamers using a 17" LCD monitor. Based on the test results charted above, it's clear that WiC doesn't place a limit on the maximum frame rate (to conserve wasted power) which is good for full-spectrum benchmarks but bad for electricity bills. The critically important minimum frame rate results indicate a shared lead between the 8800 GT AMP! Edition, ZOTAC 9800 GTX AMP! Edition, and GeForce 9800 GX2 video cards, which also carried over to higher average frame rates as well. To my surprise however, the Palit 9600 GT actually showed a prevailing strength against the others, and more closely matched itself with the top-level video cards.

With a balanced demand for CPU and GPU power, the 1280x1024 resolution proved to be the turning point for performance. Palit's 9600 GT was beginning to gain its second wind against overclocked XFX 8800 GS Alpha Dog Edition video card, but was still short of matching the powerhouse 8800 GT AMP! Edition. Also notice how the GeForce 9800 GX2 posts minimum frame rates not very much higher than the others and barely above the 30 FPS mark, which proves that even under moderate demand World in Conflict is still incredibly demanding.

At the highest graphics quality settings the Masstech engine of World in Conflict begins to really strain all of the GeForce products. At the 1600x1200 resolution, not even the crown-jewel GeForce video cards can deliver a 30 FPS minimum frame rates, which is a little discouraging considering the price tag they wear. Taking a broader look at the average frame rate, the overclocked Foxconn 8800 GTS still proves that it has game and maintains a credible pace against the GeForce 9600 GT, but it seems that the Palit Sonic just can't quite compete with other overclocked video cards with more shader cores.

It's been a long run of tests for the Palit GeForce 9600 GT 1GB Sonic video card, and in the next section I offer my conclusion and final rating for this product.

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