Four GeForce 9600 GT Cards Compared
Table of contents
- 1. Passively Cooled and Overclocked
- 2. Graphics Chip Comparison And Test Configuration
- 3. Asus GeForce 9600 GT Silent (EN9600GT SILENT/HTDI/512M/A)
- 4. Asus Software
- 5. MSI GeForce 9600 GT Hybrid Freezer (N9600GT Hybrid Freezer)
- 6. MSI Software
- 7. Palit GeForce 9600 GT Sonic (9600GT Sonic)
- 8. Sparkle GeForce 9600 GT Calibre (Calibre P960 GBOX)
- 9. Sparkle Fan
- 10. Sparkle Control
- 11. Assassins’ Creed v1.02
- 12. Call of Duty 4 v1.6
- 13. Crysis v1.21 High Quality
- 14. Crysis v1.21 Very High Quality
- 15. Enemy Territory: Quake Wars v1.4
- 16. Half Life 2: Episode 2
- 17. Mass Effect
- 18. Microsoft Flight Simulator X SP2
- 19. World in Conflict v1.05
- 20. 3DMark06 1280x1024p v1.1.0
- 21. Overall Performance Comparison
- 22. Power Consumption, Noise Level, And Temperature
- 23. 3D Power Sorted By Resolution And Anti-aliasing Settings
- 24. Conclusion--The 8800 GT Is Less Expensive And The 8800 GTS 512 Is Faster
The GeForce 9600 GT (G94) was the first graphics chip in Nvidia’s 9-series. Although it only has 64 stream processors, it is just 20% slower than the GeForce 8800 GTS 512 and can easily compete with the older 320 and 640 MB 8800 GTS models.
It’s available with a variety of different memory sizes—512 MB is standard, but almost every vendor offers models with 1 GB and even the first special models with 2 GB are already on the market. Recent tests have shown is that there is almost no difference between 512 and 1,024 MB; you can only tell when running two 3D boards in parallel using SLI at high resolutions. With current graphics drivers, the 9600 GT supports the calculations of extended physics effects in games through Nvidia’s optimized PhysX technology. It can also do calculations on the GPU using Folding@Home, and with the Badaboom video encoder, it converts videos faster than a CPU.
In this test we have four unique models with some nice modifications.
The Asus EN9600GT Silent is cooled passively, while the MSI Hybrid Freezer switches between passive and active cooling depending on chip temperature. Palit delivers an overclocked GeForce 9600 GT Sonic version with a quiet double-slot cooler and small air channel. But our focus is on its HDMI port and DisplayPort outputs. Sparkle increases speed even more. The company has a super-quiet double fan on its Calibre 9600 GT and a button to choose from three different speeds.
"Under permanent load we measured temperatures of up to 103 °C"
Not what you would call fit for purpose as a GPU, unless is also marked as a space heater!.
Why don't we have any ATI 4670 ? reviews or comparisons or benchmarks ? Who is interested in the Green cards anymore ? Especially when the conclusion is, buy another model green card. Seriously is this site sponsered by Nvidia ?
where's the GTX280 and the 9800GX2???
Blimey, I'm surprised my 8800GT compares so well with that list (SM2.0
of 5457, SM3.0 of 5704, overall score 11762 (CPU limits the overall
scores as it's only an AMD 6000+). toms must be using a pretty naffy
8800GT to only get an SM3.0 of 4984 (oh yeah, just stock clocks -
who the heck buys that these days?), especially given the X6800 being
used is 25% faster than mine. Speaking of which, if one is going to
bother testing with games like Crysis, why only use a dual-core? Surely
it makes sense to use a good quad-core so that one can be sure higher
resolution tests are not limited by CPU issues?
Overall, just more proof that the naming scheme for the 9xxx series was
crazy. Why does NVIDIA keep releasing so many different overlapping
variants with names that make no sense? The number of different names
is laughable.
Re other cards like the GTX280: maybe they haven't included more since
one can always infer other comparisons based on the various VGA charts.
The only thing I wish they'd stop doing is using MS FSX which is really
badly written (suffers terrible slowdown without the full PCIe speed
as it reloads textures constantly).
Also, has anyone ever done an analysis of exactly what Crysis is doing?
Sites are so fond of using it as if it's the ultimate benchmark because
it hammers gfx cards so hard, but how do we know it's not just
inefficiently written instead? No way to tell. How many polys per frame
typically? Not seen this mentioned anywhere. I did send this question to
NVIDIA but nobody replied. I think I would have more respect for Crysis
performance results if I could be sure it was getting more out of the
cards compared to other games, but I have to say the movie demos I've
seen don't look that good compared to, say, Stalker Clear Sky which
is said to have over a million polys/frame (a rather rough measure to
be sure, but better than nothing).
Ian.
I was sold on this unit until I read that. I really don't understand why some RAM sinks couldn't be used. As a consumer I really don't want to be looking at the temps all the time wondering if the chips are going to overheat.