NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT
Sunday 16th March 2008, 06:06:00 PM, written by Rys
G94 broke cover a little while ago, showing up as pretty much a G92
with half the clusters. The 256-bit memory interface is the same, the
video hardware is retained, PCIe 2.0 is there, and there are no
per-cluster changes compared to G92 bar some minor tweaks to the scheduler and load balancer.
It's not the most interesting chip in the world, weighing in at 505 million transistors on 65nm, 240mm square. Like G92, G94 improves its compression efficiency for AA samples up to 2x versus G8x processors, helping make the most of bandwidth available, but NVIDIA decline to comment on exactly what that means. We have a guess though, which we'll outline in our analysis (whenever that shows up!).
The performance data means that the 8700 GT, sorry 9600 GT, matches up well with AMD's Radeon HD 3850, and sometimes (depending on game and settings) NVIDIA's own 8800 GT (based on the bigger G92) and the HD 3870.
From The Tech Report's review:
"The GeForce 9600 GT is one heck of a deal in a graphics card at around $179, and that's something we like very much. If you haven't upgraded for a while and don't want to drop a lot of cash when doing so, it's hard to go wrong with the 9600 GT. This card should offer roughly twice the performance of a DX9-class graphics card like the GeForce 7900 GS or the Radeon X1950 Pro, based on what we've seen. If you want to spend a little more and get a GeForce 8800 GT, you'll get some additional future proofing in the form of shader power and just a little bit higher frame rates in today's games. Whether that's worth it will depend on your budget and your priorities. I will say this though: if there has ever been a better time to upgrade, I sure as heck don't remember it."
Clocks for the 9600 GT are 650MHz base, 1625MHz hot and a nice round 900MHz for the memory (GDDR3).
In the USA, most GeForce 9600 GTs can be had for ~$170 at the time of writing although the price gap between AIB models on Newegg is extremely large ($150-$230 before rebates!) and you'll obviously need to research a bit to decide which models hits your performance/dollar sweetspot while taking into account brand reputation, warranties and potential rebates. In the UK, the cheapest models cost ~£115 and in Europe, you can grab one for 140-170€ from Ebay.de PowerSellers.
It's not the most interesting chip in the world, weighing in at 505 million transistors on 65nm, 240mm square. Like G92, G94 improves its compression efficiency for AA samples up to 2x versus G8x processors, helping make the most of bandwidth available, but NVIDIA decline to comment on exactly what that means. We have a guess though, which we'll outline in our analysis (whenever that shows up!).
The performance data means that the 8700 GT, sorry 9600 GT, matches up well with AMD's Radeon HD 3850, and sometimes (depending on game and settings) NVIDIA's own 8800 GT (based on the bigger G92) and the HD 3870.
From The Tech Report's review:
"The GeForce 9600 GT is one heck of a deal in a graphics card at around $179, and that's something we like very much. If you haven't upgraded for a while and don't want to drop a lot of cash when doing so, it's hard to go wrong with the 9600 GT. This card should offer roughly twice the performance of a DX9-class graphics card like the GeForce 7900 GS or the Radeon X1950 Pro, based on what we've seen. If you want to spend a little more and get a GeForce 8800 GT, you'll get some additional future proofing in the form of shader power and just a little bit higher frame rates in today's games. Whether that's worth it will depend on your budget and your priorities. I will say this though: if there has ever been a better time to upgrade, I sure as heck don't remember it."
Clocks for the 9600 GT are 650MHz base, 1625MHz hot and a nice round 900MHz for the memory (GDDR3).
In the USA, most GeForce 9600 GTs can be had for ~$170 at the time of writing although the price gap between AIB models on Newegg is extremely large ($150-$230 before rebates!) and you'll obviously need to research a bit to decide which models hits your performance/dollar sweetspot while taking into account brand reputation, warranties and potential rebates. In the UK, the cheapest models cost ~£115 and in Europe, you can grab one for 140-170€ from Ebay.de PowerSellers.
Tagging
nvidia ± geforce, 9600gt, g94, techreport
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