Another Renaming Exercise?
It is often said by esteemed football managers that the game is won in the midfield, which is why you often see teams playing with a packed midfield. These rules apply to graphics cards as well. It's good to have the fastest card and all, but those are not the cards that sell in large quantities. How many of us can afford (and are insane enough) to put down nearly a grand's worth on a graphics card? Really, the battle is won in the mainstream market, because those are the cards that people actually buy.
Therefore, to beef up its mainstream offerings, NVIDIA has introduced the GeForce 9600 GSO. No, actually "reintroduce" would be more apt, because the GeForce 9600 GSO is, once again, the result of another one of NVIDIA's rehashing projects. Truth is, the "new" GeForce 9600 GSO is actually an 8800 GS, which itself is a stripped down version of the 8800 GT, which in turn has also been rebadged as the new 9800 GT.
Confused yet? Anyhow, this brings NVIDIA's mid-range GPU count to four - the GeForce 9500 GT, 9600 GSO, 9600 GT and 9800 GT. Something for everybody, or a case of senseless product cannibalism? Well, we'll soon find out with today's test subject - the XFX GeForce 9600 GSO XXX Edition.
The huge number '9' on the box reminds you that it is no longer a 8800 GS, but rather a 9600 GSO. On an more important note, the box is on the more compact side, which should make carrying it back home from the shop a breeze.
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In case you are not familiar with the 9600 GSO, and not many are, considering the short lifespan of the 8800 GS, let's us now talk you through this reintroduced GPU. Positioned as a counter to ATI's Radeon HD 4670, it has, at its heart, the same G92 core found on a GeForce 8800 GT and 9800 GT, only that it is rather terribly stripped down. For starters, instead of 112 stream processors, it gets only 96. And in terms of memory bandwidth, it has a 192-bit memory bus as compared to the GeForce 8800 GT's 256.
Clock speeds have not been spared either, as the 9600 GSO is clocked at only 550MHz for the core, 1600MHz for the memory and 1375MHz for the shaders, compared to the GeForce 8800 GT's 600MHz/1800MHz/1500MHz. With that said, let's us look at how it compares with the competition.
NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GSO and its Competition
| Model |
NVIDIA
GeForce 9600 GS0 384MB |
ATI
Radeon HD 4670 512MB |
NVIDIA
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB |
NVIDIA
GeForce 9500 GT 256/512MB |
ATI
Radeon HD 3850 256MB |
| Core
Code |
G92 |
RV730 |
G94 |
G96 |
RV670 |
| Transistor
Count |
754
million |
514 million
|
505
million |
314
million |
666
million |
| Manufacturing
Process (in nm) |
65 |
55 |
65/55 |
65/55 |
55 |
| Core
Clock |
550MHz |
750MHz
|
650MHz |
550MHz |
670MHz |
| Stream
Processors |
96
Stream Processors |
64
Shader processors consisting of 320 Stream
Processing units |
64
Stream Processors |
32
Stream Processors |
64
Shader processors consisting of 320 Stream
Processing units |
| Stream
Processor Clock |
1375MHz |
750MHz
|
1625MHz
|
1400MHz |
670MHz |
| Texture
Mapping Units (TMU) or Texture Filtering (TF)
units |
48 |
16 |
32 |
16 |
16 |
| Raster
Operator units (ROP) |
12 |
8 |
16 |
8 |
16 |
| Memory
Clock |
1600MHz
GDDR3 |
2000MHz
GDDR3/DDR3 |
1800MHz
GDDR3 |
1600MHz
GDDR3 or
1000MHz GDDR2 |
1660MHz
GDDR3 |
| DDR
Memory Bus |
192-bit |
128-bit |
256-bit
|
128-bit |
256-bit |
| Memory
Bandwidth |
38.4GB/s |
32.0GB/s
|
57.6GB/s
|
25.6GB/s
(GDDR3)
16.0GB/s (GDDR2) |
53.1GB/s |
| PCI
Express Interface |
PCIe
ver 2.0 x16 |
PCIe
ver 2.0 x16 |
PCIe
ver 2.0 x16 |
PCIe
ver 2.0 x16 |
PCIe
ver 2.0 x16 |
| Molex
Power Connectors |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
| Multi
GPU Technology |
Yes (SLI) |
Yes
(CrossFireX) |
Yes
(SLI) |
Yes
(SLI) |
Yes
(CrossFire) |
| DVI
Output Support |
2 x
Dual-Link |
2 x
Dual-Link |
2 x
Dual-Link |
2 x
Dual-Link |
2 x
Dual-Link |
| HDCP
Output Support |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
| Street
Price |
~US$100 |
US$79 |
~US$110
- 130 |
~US$70
- 89 |
~US$100
- 130 |
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