Noise and Overclocking
Noise
For noise, the GeForce 9600 GT proved to be quiet (like the great majority of the GeForce 8800s, we should point out), being silent in 2D once the driver is loaded, and accelerating only slightly in 3D under our test conditions (with no case but in a room at a temperature of 30°C/ 86°F).
We should note that if the 8800 GT 256 MB and Radeon HD 3850 512 MB we tested seem noisy, it’s because they’re from Gigabyte and use the Zalman VF700 cooler, which runs at top speed all the time (needlessly).
Overclocking
As for overclocking, the 9600 GT held no surprises. Despite its high GPU frequencies – 650 MHz (and 1625 MHz for the stream processors) –, we reached the same limits as with the G92 on the 8800 GTS 512 MB and 8800 GT 256 MB, namely 768 MHz, which would appear to be the current limit for nVidia 65 nm chips. That works out to a fairly encouraging overclocking rate of 18%.
The 512 MB of GDDR3 was able to be pushed from 900 MHz to 1120 MHz, or 24%, which is good. Age of Empires III, running at 1680*1050, showed a 16% performance gain with the boost. That’s similar to the results we got with the Radeon HD 3850, but better than the HD 3870 (which only gained 9% on the same test).
Nice analysis as always but does anyone every proof read this stuff. On
Page 17 it seems clear that the TH UK guys were sent it by the American site and they forgot to check all the links, hence the [link to your 8800GT 256MB article here] comment. Also a mix up on the first page saying the 8800GTX had 786 not 768 ram.
It seems to get worse and worse!
Seems like a very good card. Fewer shading units, but faster memory than the 8800 GT. That 256-bit memory interface really shines, although I would not personally be willing to use any 9600 GT with less than 512MB, certainly not if they switched from GDDR3 to something inferior. I would buy this card and at this price I think it fills the mid-range gap very nicely. Thanks Tom.
Don't forget that the driver it's a new one...
I had msi 8600gt oc and i see big diferrent between 163.75 and 169.25 forceware driver so maybe the 9600gt come closer to 8800gt and with little overclocking maybe it can pass it!!
Ok so what happened to the next Generation should be faster and more powerful than the previous... Good rule I thought...
This is not good news for us recent EVGA buyers waiting for the new 8800 GTX/Ultra GPU killer...
Bob
Bob, it's classed as a mid-range card, but is able to compete with 8xxx series high-end cards. With more shader units it would be faster. Sure you can make it faster, but the cost soon jumps. Considering the kind of card it can out-class I think it's a very good card for the money.
Overclock the shaders. That should bring the performance up somewhat.
Still, why didn't they badge it as the 8650 or something? This generation-jumping that ATi started with the 3850/3870 gets incredibly confusing after a while. I'd hate to know how the poor saps in retail are coping with it, particularly with the average client/gamer IQ.
Yeh,
If they had just started the 9xxx series with the G92 8800GT and 8800GTS then everyones lives would be simplier!!
Bob