The Geforce 9600GT 512 Mb Reviewed (LATEST CARD)

[editorawais]

Last month the first in the new NVIDEA 9000 series was launched. TheGeForce 9600GT 512 Mb is the first of this new line that saw the light.

This new line of has to replace the whole NVIDIA assortment beforesummer. It's six moths ago that we had our first view of the 8000series, so things are moving quickly at this company

We tested the first sibling in this new range of graphics cards the9600GT. In itself the fact the NVIDIA made the debut with the 9600GTmodel is unique. Mostly the high end super gaming monsters are thefirst to see the light. This is a middle class model but has is buildaround the new G94 GPU, and will be one of the few cards featuring thischip. Both the 9800GT and 9800GTX will be based on the G92 GPU.

The overall design is no revolution. Improvements in performance aregreat, and the price/quality ratio has gone up. But from a technicalpoint of view there is not much new under the sun.

Both the G94 and G92 GPU's don't support DirectX 10.1 like theircompetitor Ati Radion with the 3000 series. If this lack of support isa great drawback remains to be seen. Their are no games supporting 10.1and since the shelf life of a graphics card in the gaming sector isless than 6 months we need not be overcritical at this point.

Both GPU's support PCI 2.0 and Pure Video 2 ( we had already seen thisin the G84 and G86). But the new cards are cheaper, faster and have abetter energy efficiency.

Although the 9000 series is not the most innovative, fact remains thatthey are interesting cards. If we compare the new GT9600 with theGT8600 (based on the G84 GPU).

The 9600 stands out with an 256 bits memory bus, while the 8600 had towork with half that amount, 128 bits. That this increase has pronouncedeffect on the performance stands to reason.

Where the GeForce 8600 had a maximum bandwidth of 32GB/sec the 9600 iscapable of 57.6 GB/sec. Further the number of shader processors isdoubled compared to the GPU84.

The clock of the 64 unified shaders increased from 1450 Mhz, to 1625Mhz. The conclusion of this move is that Nvidea now has found a healthybalans between GPU power and memory bandwidth.

The 9600GT has two Dual-Link DVI connections, both HDCP capable. Dellis the only manufacturer that has a display capable of utilizing thatpossibility with their 24 Inch 2408WP and 30 Inch 3008WFP. Othercompanies promised to come with compatible models later this year.

Decoding HD imagery is no problem, so blue ray enthusiasts can restassured. The GT9600 can be placed in double SLI. and beats itscompetitor the HD 3870 from Ati Radeon on all fronts. Tripple SLI isnot possible but we have the feeling that not many of the potentialbuyers of this card will be interested in such a feature.

A comparison table for different games and resolutions can be found onour site. A strange phenomenon is that the overall energy consumptionof the HD3870 X2 is higher with less performance.

To wrap it up, we think that a complete new line in 6 months time is abit overdoing it, but that NVIDIA did a good job with the Geforce9600GT 512 Mb. The great never seen before price/performance ratio isthe and the consistent beating of the 3870 from Ati makes this card agreat choice for the demanding but not overly fanatic gamer.

As soon as we can lay our hands on the 9800 models with will very happyto give them a good spin and find out what their extremes are. With ourstrange inclination we love to put new cards on the torture table.