NVIDIA 9600GT launched

New Ferrari engine bolted into Datsun 120Y

NVIDIA has been firing off GeForce 8 cards from the hip with its G92 core -- the 8800GT, 8800GTS and 8800GS have all hit within close succession.

But now the green giant has started rolling out its GeForce 9 series GPUs. The first to be let out of the cage is the G94, and the first card to use it is the 9600GT. We’ve got a sample in the labs and it’s destined to be the replacement for the mid-range 8-series cards -- the 8600GT and 8600GTS. If you’re after bang for your buck, and the pricing hits the sweet spot, the 9600GT will be where you should be looking.



The new 9600GT is based on the 65nm G94 core with 512MB of memory and sports 64 stream processors – that’s double that which is found in the 8600-series GPUs (32 stream processors) and two thirds of the amount found in the 8800GS (96 stream processors).

What it may lack in stream processors, the 9600GT makes up for in raw graphic processing grunt. The sample we’ve got in for testing comes with a stock core frequency of 725MHz, a memory frequency of 1000MHz and a shader clock frequency of 1750MHz. These high frequencies compensate for the relatively low stream processor count, and put the card within close reach of the slightly more powerful 8800GT in outright performance.



Before you read the full review in the next issue of Atomic (#87), we’d like to whet your appetite. We took the new card out for a quick bench on a Core 2 Duo E8500 running at 4GHz in an Asus P5E3 Deluxe with some Corsair Dominator DDR3-1800 C7 @ DDR3-1686 6-6-6-18 2T RAM.

The result? A solid (and mouth watering) 12.7k in 3DMark06 – remember peeps, this is meant to be a mid-range budget solution!



Begin your drooling.