9600GT roundup pt.2
Author: Vedran Dakic
Date: 10 Apr 2008

Today we are going to compare a few of the new NVIDIA mainstream cards, the 9600GTs. They were introduced to the market to fill the void that was left between the 8800GT 256 and 8600GTS. This void was quite big since NVIDIA decided to make 8600 a very weak card. We already did our coverage of the 9600GT launch, so now we are going to focus on the performance of the cards with a brief recount of their technology.

The 9600GT

The 9600GT is meant to be the new NVIDIA ace in the sub $200 range, where it had a big gap, if we don’t count the rarely available 8800GT 256 MB version. Everybody quickly wanted to forget the half fiasco of the 8600 series. So we now have the 9600GT, a much stronger card that continues in the footsteps of the very successful 6600 and 7600 series. The thing is, x600 was always one half of the x800, except in the 8 series where 8600 had only a quarter of the shades that 8800 had. Now, the x600 returns with the right ratio, and has 64 shaders, In theory, this makes the card twice as fast as the 8600GTS, but we what is really interesting is its relation to ATI’s competition. In the weeks after its introduction, Radeons 38xx made a real mess on the market with their excellent price/performance ratio.  Now, NVIDIA is promising us the same performance for the even lower price. Talking from a distance of a few weeks from the launch, we can say that 9600GT did what it was supposed to. ATI lowered its prices, and customers now have an option of going for either ATI or NVIDIA.

The 9600GT is based on NVIDIA’s new GPU, the G94. Although it shares the same design features as the G92, it is a completely new product, and a first NVIDIA GPU featuring 64 shaders. Up until now we have had 128,112,96,32 and 16 shaders available in NVIDIA’s DX10 products. The obvious void has now been filled with the G94.  When we wrer talking about Radeon 2900XT a year ago, we mentioned that most of the time, its 320 shader processors work in groups of five, and that they should, for all intents and purposes, be regarded as 64 SP on NVIDIA side. The same thing translated into the 3870 and 3850, so now finally we have two cards we can directly compare. The G94chip uses 256 bit memory bus and the card is equipped with 512 MB of memory. The cooler on a stock version is similar to that of the 8800GT, which means it can be quite loud if the card is under full load. Granted, it has less heat to dissipate in case of this card, but it is still not an optimal design. So, it’s no wonder that a few manufacturers decided to outfit their cards with different coolers, with their main characteristic being two slot design.

We are looking at the cards from Gainward, EVGA and Palit today, all of them in some sort of overclocking mode.

Gainward Bliss 9600GT GS 1024 MB
The first card we put through our test procedure came from Gainward, a well know manufacturer of factory OCed cards. This card comes with a memory clock of 1000 MHz and a core clock of 700MHz, but more importantly it comes with 1024 MB of frame buffer memory, just like MSI's N9600GT-T2D1G. How useful it is in this market range we will have to see later, but even that is not all. Gainward also provides a custom designed two slot cooler, and a very interesting set of connectors on the back panel. In addition to the two DVI connectors, there is also an HDMI one, and the upcoming DisplayPort connector. DisplayPort is similar to HDMI; but it does not require licensing, and it supports slightly higher resolutions. Because it is backed by gigants such as Intel, Dell and Samsung, it is expected to quickly move into the market and possibly push out HDMI.

Palit 9600GT Sonic
As with Gainward’s GS series, Palit, who is Gainward’s owner, also has its OC series of cards called Sonic. The 9600GT we included in this roundup comes from that series and is, in fact, a twin brother of Gainward’s 9600GT GS. It has the same board layout, the same connectors, but only 512 MB of memory. Even the card’s clocks are the same. What is different is the cooler, and we will later see which one is more effective. It will also enable us to see is there a real benefit from using 1024 MB on a mainstream card.

EVGA 9600 GT SSC 512 MB
After the two custom designed cards, EVGA’s model uses NVIDIA reference design and cooler, but with quite higher core clock of 740 MHz. This is almost 100 MHz more than the stock one, but the memory falls second to Gainward and Palit on 975 MHz or 1950 MHz effective. This is also the first batch of EVGA cards that don’t have the standard green white and black design, but rather use orange and black colors.

MSI N9600GT-T2D1G-OC
MSI's card has a somewhat different approach to cooling, with a cooler that's completely redesigned from the bottom up. It actually reminds us of some coolers MSI has done in the past. The card itself is red - strangely enough - since reference cards have green PCB's so the cooler is also red. This card is also overclocked (hence the OC in the product name) - so you can expect higher clocks and speeds.

To benchmark the cards, we used our standard graphics testbed
- Intel Core 2 Quad QX9650
- ASUS P5N-T 780i Deluxe
- OCZ Platinum XTC PC-2 8000, 2x1 GB
- Western Digital RaptorX 150 GB
- PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 1KW-SR

All benchmarks were run under Windows Vista x64 Ultimate and in DX10 mode, since it puts significantly more strain on the cards than DX9. We ran only one resolution, since 1680x1050 is the standard one for mainstream displays of 20’’ and 22’’. We used 4x AA option for the second batch of benchmarks to see how it will affect performance.