This is getting silly. With the launch of the new GeForce 9600 GT, Nvidia has added yet another chipset to the ludicrously crowded upper-medium segment of the PC graphics market. To give you some idea of how congested things have become, have a chew on this brief synopsis.
Boards based on the ATI Radeon HD 3850 chipset can be had for a whiff over £90, while the 3870 kicks off at £125. From Nvidia, there's the 8800 GS, a cut-down chipset based on the G92 GPU at about £90, with the standard G92 variant (the 8800 GT) yours for £135 in 256MB trim or £150 for the 512MB version. The full fat G92, known as the 8800 GTS 512MB, starts at approximately £175.
Needless to say, several additional variations including a wide range of factory overclocked cards complicate matters further. Prices are likewise constantly shifting, creating all manner of confusing overlaps.
It's into this baffling, DX10-powered melange that Nvidia has dropped the 9600 GT. The particular Palit-flavoured 9600GT Sonic tested here, complete with factory overclocked core and memory settings, weighs in at £127.
Get ready for G94
In many ways what we'd really like to see is a new high end chipset to restore balance to the universe and relieve the congestion towards the top of the market. But the 9600 GT is what we have. And it's actually a rather fine thing.
Architecturally, it's powered by the new G94 GPU and is therefore a chip off the same 65nm block as the 8800 GT and 8800 GTS 512MB.
In other words, while it may not sport quite as many functional units, it does boast identical 3D rendering capabilities. Exactly how those capabilities differ from Nvidia's first generation of DX10 GPUs, including the 9600's predecessor the 8600 GTS, remains unclear.
For now, all Nvidia is willing to reveal is that data compression has been improved which in turn relieves some pressure from the memory bus. Still, NVIDIA has at least seen fit to divulge the 9600 GT's basic layout.
First up, the shader count weighs in at 64 streaming units. That's half of the total of an 8800 GTS 512MB-based board (don't forget, the 8800 GT has a slightly smaller 112-unit shader total). The 9600 must also make do with half the number of texture address and sampling units of its bigger brother. In most regards, therefore, the 9600 is functionally one half of a G92-based 8800 GPU.
