Times sure have changed with the graphics cards market. Gone are the days when a new generation of graphics cards was introduced by the top-of-the-line product with a BANG and medium-end cards followed a few weeks or months later. I guess AMD/ATI could be given the credit for starting this trend as they have been launching high and mid-end products at the same time with their last couple of generations of graphics products. nVidia follows that trend today by introducing their latest 9xxx series of graphics card with the 9600GT- a mid-range product.

The G94 core on which the 9600GT is based on, isn’t exactly new when it comes to architecture. Its based on the G92 core that powered the 8800GT and is almost identical to it. nVidia has cut down the number of Stream Processors from 112 to 64 while the same 256-bit memory interface is used. The Core Clock is set to 650MHz, Shader Clock to 1625MHz while 512MB of GDDR3 operates at 1800MHz. The following is a full list of specifications

Specifications

Fabrication Process: 65 nm
Number of Transistors: 505 Million
Core Clock (Including dispatch, texture units, and ROP units): 650 MHz
Shader Clock (Stream Processors): 1625 MHz
Stream Processors (#): 64
Memory Clock (MHz / data rate): 900/1800
Memory Interface: 256 bit
Memory Bandwidth (Gigabyes per second): 57.6 GBps
Frame Buffer Size: 512 MB
ROPs (#): 16
Texture filtering rate (bilinear filtered texels per clock): 32
Texture Fill Rate (Billions of bilinear filtered texels per second): 20.8 GTps
HDCP Support: Yes (all SKUs)
DisplayPort: Yes (on-chip)
HDMI Support: Yes (on-chip)
Connectors: 2 x Dual-Link DVI-I, 7-pin TV Out
RAMDACs: 400 MHz
Bus Technology: PCI Express 2.0
Form Factor: Single Slot
Power Connector: 1 x 6-pin
Max Board Power: 95 Watts

Looking at those specifications, one would think that the G94 should be a pretty decent mid-rang graphics card. For those looking into using it for high-definition video, nVidia now decodes MPEG, x264 and VC1 completely on the GPU leaving the CPU free for other tasks. Unfortunately, Direct X 10.1 is not supported.

We received the 9600GT from ECS and the version they sent us was clocked slightly higher than the stock speeds mentioned above. The card we’ve tested has the Core clock set to 680MHz while the memory is also bumper to 1650MHz.

Like ECS’ 8800GT that we reviewed recently, the 9600GT is cooled by their passive Accelero S2 heatsink, however, no fans are included in the package which is fine as the card never ran extremely hot. The usal DSUB, Video and power cables are included with the ECS 9600GT. Lets get straight to the numbers.