The answer actually depends on one single point. Money!

nVidia GeForce 9600GT is the new main-stream (budget) card. It uses a G94 processor, has 512MB VRAM and lacks direct X 10.1 support unlike many expected.
Therefore, this has very little to offer feature-wise when compared with G92 (8800GT).

Lets first focus on the performance of nVidia 9600GT.
I wont bother about the FPS benchmark images as they are available in almost every tech-news site. I would rather try to summarize the whole thing and let you guys know what is the best thing to do.

9600GT is:

• almost equal to (but always below of) 8800GT on lower resolutions (<1600).
• slightly below or equal to ATI Radeon HD 3870 (without AA)
• better than Radeon HD 3870 (with AA)
  

Price range of:

• 9600GT is $169-$189
• 8800GT is $199-$200+
• Radeon 3870 is ~$180

Now, if you think about it carefully, you should try to buy a 8800GT (the 512MB one; not the one with 256MB VRAM) if you can.
If you are really short on budget, can't afford $20-$30 more, go for 9600GT.
And finally, there's not much reason to go for 3870 unless you want DX 10.1 support.


On a side note, 9800GTX will be released next month (followed by a 9800GT) and you can blow out any 8800GTX with it for a mere $599.

As this is my first blog here, I'd like to introduce myself just a little.
I go by the nick CvP, age is 21 and I study CSE in North South University.
Please feel free to contact me if needed. You can use my email address but it is better to use pm/forums of TomorrowsGaming. Advanced thanks for reading my blogs.

A lot of things have been happening in gaming world lately esp in the physics area which is very tightly attached to the fate of tomorrows gaming.



The Story So Far:
Some times ago, it was AGEIA (physX) and Havok (Havok Physics or HavokFX)..two unique solutions to implementing physics in games.

• physX of AGEIA is based of their own code-set- physX SDK, and a discreet Physics Processing Unit (PPU) called physX card.
  
• HavokFX is totally about using existing (and future) GPU to process physics (through the general concept of GPGPU).

physX is superior to HavokFX. Havok could only do "eye-candy" physics i.e. things that only appeared visually, no effect on gameplay/world. On the other hand, AGEIA's dedicated PPU could process physics that effect the real gameworld. It is true that those calculations could have been done in the CPU, but that kills the frame-rate as seen in Unreal Tournament 3 physX enabled maps. CPU is not suited for something massively parallel calculation like physics calculation.
While a GPU could handle it, it'd need to communicate back-and-forth with the CPU. But given the nature of CPU-GPU interconnections, GPU is (or was?) not suited to that.
By the way, Source engine also uses Havok, but a hugely customized version.



While Havok was getting more market due to their "cheap" way, AGEIA was struggling as less developers were embracing them due to the fact people really don't want to buy another piece of extra card. However, AGEIA secured a BIG market when EPIC used AGEIA physX in their Unreal Engine 3. If you don't know, games like BioShock, Unreal Tournament 3, Gears of War, American Army all used UE3 and a lot of (different kind of) developers bought UE3 for their up coming games.



nVidia and ATi
nVidia and ATi, on the other hand, both have been boasting about processing physics in their GPU. The idea was mainly to have SLi/CrossFire between three (or two) cards; two (or one) for gfx processing and one entirely for physics. They both were looking highly of Havok; their savior.


AMD
Then something weird happened. Even if Intel was wipping floor with AMD in desktop processor scenario, AMD bought ATi; with a huge risk but with a huge possibility also. This gave AMD the firepower to go for something more unified- CPU+GPU (i.e. their Fusion project). They also announced of a weird crossfire between their upcoming integrated GPU and discreet GPU. And they are indeed, looking at the physics field.



Intel
While AMD was securing this field, Intel got one step ahead! They acquired Havok! As Intel was in discreet GPU business a long ago, has the largest GPU market share (with their integrated gfx) and rumored to come back to GPU business in up coming years, all they were missing is physics. And they just secured that part.

It is only natural that Intel wants a good way to process physics of games in their processors i.e. their Larrabee (GPU+PPU in x86 architecture) project.


nVidia
Now if you were in nVidia's position, all these news will scare you.

• Intel : CPU, GPU (integrated & discreet), PPU (not discreet), Motherboard chipset
  
• AMD : CPU, GPU (integrated & discreet), PPU (may be in future), Motherboard chipset
• Havok, the physics on GPU project is dead
  

Where is the place of nVidia in this new scenario?

Therefore, nVidia had to do something..and you guessed it right- they acquired the only thing left: AGEIA!
nVidia is now planning to enable physX to be processed on ANY GeForce 8 series card by using Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA), a C like programing lingo that can turn a GeForce 8 GPU to GPGPU. It is still uncertain whether nVidia will provide discreet PPU like AGEIA did. However, with their current plan, it seems they wont.
A few days ago nVidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said,

???
Among all these major players, we are missing one, aint we? Where is the software giant Microsoft? Well, they will play a vital role in this physics game.
If you are still now getting it, it is their DirectX- the most used, de facto standard game development API. Microsoft has always helped gaming through DirectX. It provides a easy, widely used way to develop games. It also standardizes the key features as you can see, all gfx cards now boasts about supporting DirectX.

It is rumored that Microsoft will include some sort of DirectPhysics just like Direct 3d/Draw/Sound/Music/Input/Play. And they should. Without it, things will turn nasty.



The Story of the Future:
Physics will indeed play a vital role in tomorrows gaming. However, what will happen to physics itself? Consider this situation:

• Intel with its Larrabee GPU+PPU
• nVidia with its GeForce + physX on CUDA
• DAAMIT with something on their own

It is very much clear these physics SDK/instructions/process wont be compatible with each other. nVidia got a head-start with physX implemented in several games and physX on CUDA. But given Intel's current records, if their Larrabee can beat GeForce, they can just throw out nVidia from the market. Forget not DAAMIT! They are the cornered mou...err...tiger.

The only solution I see is a DirectPhysics from Microsoft.
However, that wont happen before DirectX 11 which is due in 2009 (rumor though!).
If they all go their own way instead of standardizing things, it is a bad news for us, the gamers.


The fate of tomorrows gaming is still uncertain...

Gaming. Pastime for some, necessity for others. Yes, gaming is an integral part of everyday life on the PC and Vista promises to be a great OS for the job. It is quite obvious that Direcx10 will provide a dramatic boost for next gen games .But what about today and yesterday? Just because newer games arrive ,it isn’t quite expected that games only few years old will be left to eat dust in the garbage .Is vista fully baked for gaming or only a half cooked food that will leave you disappointed ?Lets find out !

The number of “Directx10 only games” is still quite rare. Games like Crysis ,Bioshock ,company of heroes are optimized for Directx10 ,but they do not drop support for Directx9.DX10 enabled Games obviously look finer in vista, but do they also run faster ?Read on ...




Let’s take a deep look. Windows vista is the first ever windows that is supplemented with a unique game explorer that keeps track of your already installed games ,shows their rating and also helps you update them periodically. It is also the first windows to use a separate branding for games called “Games for windows”. So far, sounds good .Both nvidia and Ati have already shipped DX10 enabled GPUs and completely rewritten their drivers for Microsoft s newest baby. The atmosphere is ready and so are the gamers. And be noted,DirectX10 is a vista exclusive.



(Vista game explorer automatically organizes your installed games)


We first evaluated how DX10 enabled games performed under vista compared to XP.Then also took a look at the performance of DX9 games in vista compared to xp.We tried to find out ,how much performance varied under these two platforms .To be honest, the results were not quite groundbreaking for vista lovers…

Now first find out what DX10 can do for us and what DX9 can’t:
Directx 9 vs. Directx 10:
As mentioned before,DirectX 10 is exclusive to Windows Vista and is not slated to be supported by any other platform. This will ensure that the next-gen games will be available on Windows Vista before any other platform.
So how much better DirectX 10 is in comparison to DirectX 9? check these screenshots for blowing your mind.




(Age of conan DX9)

(Age of conan DX10)

(Microsoft Flight simulator DX9)

(Microsoft flight simulator DX10)

(Crysis)



Test for DX9 games:
Test machine:
Processor: Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 (Conroe 65 nm, 2.93 GHz, 4 MB L2 Cache)
Motherboard :Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6
Chipset: Intel P965, 82801HR (ICH8), BIOS: F8
Common Hardware
RAM: 2x 1024 MB DDR2-800 (CL 3.0-4-3-9)
Corsair CM2X1024-6400C3 XMS6403v1.1
Graphics Card: HIS Radeon X1900XTX IceQ3
GPU: ATI X1900XTX (650 MHz)
RAM: 512 MB GDDR3 (1550 MHz)
System Hard Drive: 1x 150 GB 10,000 RPM, 8 MB Cache, SATA/150
Western Digital WD1500ADFD
Data Hard Drive: 1x 150 GB 10.000 RPM, 8 MB Cache, SATA/150
Western Digital WD1500ADFD
DVD-ROM: Teac DV-W50D

Benchmark:
Higher numbers indicate better performance.Calculations are based on Frame per second(FPS)









Benchmark image source:www.tomshardware.com
Test for DX10 games:
Test machine:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 (2.66GHz) LGA775

- X2 1024MB Corsair XMS PC3-10600 CAS7 Module(s)

- ASUS P5E3 Deluxe (Intel X38)

- OCZ GameXStream (700 watt)

- Seagate 500GB 7200RPM (Serial ATA II)

- Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX (768MB)
- ATI Radeon HD 2900XT (512MB

Benchmark:
Higher numbers indicate better performance.Calculations are based on Frame per second(FPS)

Crysis makes the most of DX10 visual effects so we chose it for our benchmark:



Benhmark image source:www.techspot.com

We were told Crysis would perform better in Vista but this apparently excluded DX10 performance as both the 8800 GTX and Radeon HD 2900XT were slower in Vista/DX10 when compared to XP/DX9. While the GeForce 8800 GTX only suffers from a small performance loss the Radeon HD 2900XT is completely killed off in Vista. Therefore we recommend anyone running a Radeon HD 2900XT to stick to XP


Final Thoughts:

It may seem like our testing with gaming performance in Vista all resulted in a feeling of doom and gloom, but don't let that scare you off just yet. I think we all expected there to be some initial growing pains with the Vista operating system and PC gaming simply because of the dramatic shift in driver technology that had to take place; I just don't think we expected it to be this bad. This may change as driver revisions are updated through the comings months, so we'll definitely be keeping an eye on both companies progress.

For now, gamers that were interested in running off to get a copy of Windows Vista, I'd caution you to take a minute and contemplate. Gaming under Vista is definitely possible and if you're comfortable with some slight performance drops for now while taking advantage of Vista's other new features, then a move to Vista sooner rather than later should be considered. If gaming and gaming performance is your only metric for your PC, then I'd definitely hold out on upgrading until AMD and NVIDIA have their software perfected.