Nvidia 9600GT Benchmarks & Specs

The newly revealed Nvidia 9600GT card that was previously mentioned here has been benchmarked by Tomshardware, the premiere site for graphic card benchmarks. And L33tzone is proud to present the summary of the results for its readers.

The 9600GT Is it just another version of the G92 – the same graphics processor all the GeForce cards such as GeForce 8800 GT 256 MB, 8800 GT 512 MB, 8800 GT 1 GB, 8800 GTS 512 MB,are based upon, however, the essential difference is that the G94 only has half the number of stream processors of the G92: 64. This pales in comparison to the 112 a “simple” GeForce 8800 GT 256 MB boasted, you’re thinking. That’s not untrue, but the shader frequency is higher (compared to the 8800 GT only, since the G92 on the 8800 GTS uses the same frequency), attaining 1625 MHz for these units (650 MHz for the rest of the GPU). But even at that frequency, the raw processing power of this G94 is still a full 38% lower than that of the 8800 GT.

the G94 has only 505 million transistors, or 33% fewer than the G92, and it has a surface area we measured at 225 mm2, or 31% smaller, despite the same engraving depth (65 nm). That value is still 15% higher than on the RV670 used in the AMD 3D graphics cards it directly targets.

Please Note: Following link has benchmark results in the form of pictures. Please Wait while they download.

Here are the Specifications of the Card:

GPU	9600 GT
GPU frequency	650 MHz
Shader frequency	1625 MHz
Memory frequency	900 MHz
Memory bus width	256 bits
Type of memory	GDDR3
Memory	512 MB
Number of Pixels/Vertex Pipelines	(16)
Number of texturing units	32
Number of ROPs	16
Processing power	208 GFlops
Memory bandwidth	57.6 GB/s
Number of transistors	505 million
Process	0.065µ
Die surface area	225 mm²
Generation	2008
Shader model supported	4.0

 Benchmark Results:

Although there are more benchmarks given at the Original Benchmark post, here are some of the things that i found quite interesting:

 

Conclusion

The bottom line is that the performance of this GeForce 9600 GT came as a pleasant surprise. Despite the chip having only 64 stream processors, 38% lower processing power, and 33% fewer transistors, gaming performance was only 12% below the 8800 GT on average. And it was even better than the 8800 GT 256 MB, by an amount ranging from 1% without antialiasing, up to 45% with it enabled. The 8800 GT 256 MB is greatly hampered by its 256 MB of memory, and these results mean that it is really no longer even worth considering! Meaning that it was an extremely good choice to put 512 MB of memory on the 9600 GT, even if that doesn’t account for everything, since the 8800 GT has the same amount.

The upshot is that the 9600 GT puts Nvidia in a much more favorable position to compete with AMD. First, the HD 3850 is beaten hands down performance-wise, since even compared to its 512 MB version (which can be found on sale at 165-170 €, the expected MSRP for the 9600 GT), performance was approximately 15% better. Only the 256 MB version still has no competition, given its 140 € price point.

This card is a valid replacement for the GeForce 8800 GT 256 MB, and is the best low-cost solution for gamers who play with antialiasing enabled. Without the filters enabled, its performance drops behind the HD 3870 (while still staying ahead of the HD 3850s), but its price is expected to be slightly lower than that of the AMD card.

Pros

• Performance/price ratio
• The best card in its price range for performance with antialiasing enabled
• Reduced power consumption and noise

Cons

• Performance below that of the HD 3870 without filters
• Not really any more a “GeForce 9” card than the 8800 GTs

SOURCE: TOMSHARDWARE