A Force for Efficiency
With the introduction of the GeForce 8 series, NVIDIA did away with the separation of 2D and 3D clock speeds for its desktop graphics. Previously, the clock speeds on an NVIDIA board were lowered when running a less intensive 2D application. When a 3D application was launched, the proper clock speeds were restored. This was an energy saving method that was discarded by NVIDIA due to the lower TDP requirements of the newer generation of cards and the fact that Windows Vista's Aero UI would be constantly taxing the graphics card anyway.
ATI however did not take the same approach. Instead, the company has aggressively played the energy efficient card, which culminated in the appearance of ATI's PowerPlay feature (previously on its mobile GPUs only) on its latest Radeon HD 3800 series. This feature allows for lower clocks on those compliant ATI graphics cards and in our experience, significantly reduced idle power draw compared to its NVIDIA counterparts.
We didn't get the retail package but here's the product image from Gigabyte's website.
|
So what's one to do if one desires the former 2D/3D clock separation of yesterday on a new NVIDIA card? One could either force that separation via third party utilities like RivaTuner or enjoy it out of the box from the vendor. The latter is in our hands today in the form of the Gigabyte Gv-NX96T512HP. While we knew that this was a Turbo Force edition card with additional features like enhanced performance tuning for maximum stability, we didn't realize about its 2D/3D clock separation till we plugged the card in. Before we go into all that, here are the technical specifications:
Gigabyte GV-NX96T512HP Technical Specifications
| Graphics
Engine |
- NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT
GPU (G94)
- 505 million transistors
- 3D GPU
clock = 720MHz
- 64 Stream Processors at 1800MHz
- NVIDIA Unified Architecture
- GigaThread technology
- Full support for Microsoft DirectX 10
- Geometry shaders
- Geometry instancing
- Streamed output
- Shader Model 4.0
- Full 128-bit floating point precision through the
entire rendering pipeline
- NVIDIA Lumenex Technology
- 16x full screen anti-aliasing
- Transparent multisampling and transparent
supersampling
- 16x angle independent anisotropic filtering
- 128-bit floating point high dynamic-range (HDR)
lighting
with anti-aliasing
- 32-bit per component floating point texture
filtering
and blending
- Advanced lossless compression algorithms for color,
texture, and z-data
- Support for normal map compression
- Z-cull
- Early-Z
- NVIDIA Quantum Effects Technology
- Advanced shader processors architected for physics
computation
- Simulate and render physics effects on the graphics
processor
- NVIDIA SLI Technology
- NVIDIA PureVideo HD
Technology
- Dedicated on-chip video processor (VP2)
- High-definition H.264, VC-1, MPEG2 and WMV9
decode
acceleration
- Advanced spatial-temporal de-interlacing
- HDCP capable
- Spatial-Temporal De-Interlacing
- Noise Reduction
- Edge Enhancement
- Bad Edit Correction
- Inverse telecine (2:2 and 3:2 pull-down
correction)
- High-quality scaling
- Video color correction
- Microsoft Video Mixing Renderer (VMR) support
- Advanced Display Functionality
- Two dual-link DVI outputs for digital flat panel
display
resolutions up to 2560x1600
- Dual integrated 400MHz RAMDACs for analog display
resolutions up to and including 2048x1536 at 85Hz
- Integrated HDTV encoder provides analog TV-output
(Component/Composite/S-Video) up to 1080i resolution
- NVIDIA nView multi-display technology capability
- 10-bit display processing
- Built for Windows Vista
- Full DirectX 10 support
- Dedicated graphics processor powers the new Windows
Vista
Aero 3D user interface
- VMR-based video architecture
- Designed for PCI
Express 2.0
- Designed for high-speed GDDR3 memory
- Advanced thermal
monitoring and thermal management
|
| Graphics
Memory |
- 256-bit memory
interface
- 512MB Graphics DDR3
SDRAM
- Default clock rate of 1008MHz (effective speed of
2016MHz
DDR)
|
| Display
Capabilities |
- Dual 400MHz RAMDACs
that support resolutions of
2048x1536@85Hz
- Dual-link DVI
capability to drive displays of up to
2560x1600
|
| Connectors |
- 1 x mini-DIN connector
(for Video-out)
- 2 x DVI-I connector
(HDCP Ready)
|
| Drivers
& Software |
- Driver support for
Microsoft Windows Vista/9x/ME/2000/XP/XP
MCE/XP Pro x64, Linux and Macintosh OS (including OS X)
|
| Other
Information |
- PCI Express x16 2.0 compliant
- Dedicated 6-pin PCIe
Molex power connector required (not
shared or split)
- Power supply rated for
400W or higher recommended by
NVIDIA
|
|
| Terms Of Service
|
