Nvidia's Geforce 9600 GT

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It’s always interesting to see how rapidly a well-established situation can change in the world of graphics cards. Take last year, for example. Despite the obvious success (with many differences, granted) of new high-end architectures and cards launched by nVidia and AMD, for months we complained about the absence of midrange or mainstream cards worthy of the name – given the weakness of the Radeon HD 2600 and GeForce 8600 and the high price of the GeForce 8800 GTS 320 MB.

Nvidia Geforce 9600GT

Yet all it took was nVidia’s launch of its GeForce 8800 GT in late October to release a flood of graphics cards (separated in price by just a fistful of Euros) any of which eclipsed the entry-level and high-end cards from each maker with their performance/features/price ratios. It quickly reached a point where we’d completely lost our bearings and the situation bordered on the ridiculous, with a plethora of names and ultra-limited series - GeForce 8800 GT 256 MB, 8800 GT 512 MB, 8800 GT 1 GB, 8800 GS, Radeon HD 3850 256 MB and HD 3850 512 MB, the HD 3870 , etc. Now the GeForce 9600 GT has to be added to that list. Is it just another version of the G92 – based on the same graphics processor as all the GeForce cards listed above–, or is it really a new GPU to introduce the GeForce 9 generation of nVidia graphics cards?


Talkback

spanner_razor 21/02/2008 04:56
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spanner_razor
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.
mi1ez 21/02/2008 05:04
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mi1ez
It seems to get worse and worse!
Wild9 21/02/2008 07:00
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Wild9
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.
chriskoups 21/02/2008 09:24
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chriskoups
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!!
BobWya 22/02/2008 01:33
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BobWya
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
Wild9 22/02/2008 04:02
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Wild9
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.
Mugz 23/02/2008 11:50
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Mugz
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.
BobWya 23/02/2008 05:26
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BobWya
Yeh,

If they had just started the 9xxx series with the G92 8800GT and 8800GTS then everyones lives would be simplier!!

Bob

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