# NVIDIA GeForce 9600GT 512MB First Full Review Posted



## malware (Jan 14, 2008)

PConline.com.cn has posted what should be the first official full review of NVIDIA GeForce 9600GT 512MB. In this 16 page long review you'll find in depth comparison between GeForce 9600GT, GeForce 8600GTS 256MB, the newly released GeForce 8800GS 384MB 192bit and ATI Radeon HD3850 256MB. On page 3 there's also a size comparison between G92, G94, G84 and RV670 GPU cores. The review is written in foreign language, but I'm sure you won't need a dictionary to understand the pics and benchmark scores.



 



*View at TechPowerUp Main Site*


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## InnocentCriminal (Jan 14, 2008)

I'll have a butchers when I'm not so busy at work. It'll be interesting. ^^


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## snuif09 (Jan 14, 2008)

very good for a midrange


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## Mussels (Jan 14, 2008)

384MB is good. 256MB is borderline atm, so for 1280x1024 and below this is perfect.


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## yogurt_21 (Jan 14, 2008)

damn any body know how many rop's this thing has? seems like it still has 16 even though it's on 64 shaders.


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## Shyska (Jan 14, 2008)

Still only dx10? Will high range 9xxx series cards have 10.1?


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## yogurt_21 (Jan 14, 2008)

i'd imagine that nvidia will go 10.1 once the games do.


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## magibeg (Jan 14, 2008)

I wonder what the power draw on this guy is. Wasn't it just supposed to be a die-shrink 8600? The benchmarks don't look that way at all.


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## WarEagleAU (Jan 15, 2008)

Wow very interesting.


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## Shyska (Jan 15, 2008)

yogurt_21 said:


> i'd imagine that nvidia will go 10.1 once the games do.



Yes, and after the games do, 8-9xxx range becomes obsolete? How smart is that?


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## ShadowFold (Jan 15, 2008)

yogurt_21 said:


> i'd imagine that nvidia will go 10.1 once the games do.



How many games this year used DX10  what you said made no sense lol


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## Mussels (Jan 15, 2008)

ShadowFold said:


> How many games this year used DX10  what you said made no sense lol



10.0 and 10.1 have very little difference. 10.1 makes some optional components of 10.0 mandatory.

Nvidia have said they wont do it for a gen or two, which is good - i'd rather a card that does 10.0 respectably than 10.1 slow as crap.


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## ShadowFold (Jan 15, 2008)

How is 10.1 worse? Honestly I would have bought my HD 3850 if it was DX9 cause I absolutly hate vista, and yes I have Basic OEM and its pretty bad.


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## phanbuey (Jan 15, 2008)

ShadowFold said:


> How is 10.1 worse? Honestly I would have bought my HD 3850 if it was DX9 cause I absolutly hate vista, and yes I have Basic OEM and its pretty bad.



Its not "worse"... its that supporting stuff like tesselation and DX10.1 is meaningless now because no one uses it yet, and current cards would run those things like a powerpoint in the future anyways... basically 10.1 is a moot point atm, so its useless... it doesnt change the card at all though, if thats what you mean.

also, that 8800GS' memory bus is a huge handicap...


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## Mussels (Jan 15, 2008)

well the 8800GS should be good for low res users, such as my 40" HDTV (1024x768/1366x768)


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## divinebaboon (Jan 25, 2008)

ok I'm gonna do my best to translate this...sorry if my grammar suck.
1.Intro
Even though the 8800GT has a good money-to-performance ratio, the cost of it is still to high for average gamers (1900Yuan)，But, even in this high range video card category, Ati got nothing on Nvidia. Still,2000+Yuan video cards are not the mainstream popular items in the chinese market. Most ppl onl ycare about the 1000 ~ 1999 yuan mid range video cards. And nvidia doesnt have alot to offer in that category. Ati on the other hand,has Radeon HD3850. To make up for its weakness in the mid range card market, nvidia send out 8800GT 256MB and 8800GS. Still, the 256mb GT sucks in higher resolution and the 8800GS is just a delaying tatic to hold off ATI until back-up arrives. Now, msot of yous probablly know, nvidia will release G94 chip with DX10 support on valentine's day, alogn with 9600GT. Today, one month away from valentines day, us at pconline test labs used our "connections and influence" and finally got a hold of the G94 9600GT. How will it compare to the Radeon HD3850、GeForce 8800GS and GeForce 8600GTS?Let's find out.

2. G94 chip internal specs
According to the name,the G94 chip will surpass the 8 series(no duh). And the cards with the number 6 in its name ahve been hot buys here in china from the 6600GT,7600GT,to the 8600GT. So we can safely assume that the future of 9600GT will be very bright. (insert fancy chart here) Now, According "reliable sources", the chip uses 65nm technology. It has 2 stream processor, doubling the G84 chip's. It will be a good match against Radeon HD3850. Just like G92 chips,G94 supports 256bit memory, and H 264(no idea what that is). It stil lsupports DirectX 10 and shader model 4.0. Seems like nvidia is not that eager to make DX10.1 cards yet.

3 is about the sizing tof the chip,nothing to translate there.
4. Appearence
from the looks of it GeForce 9600GT and GeForce 8800GTare similar,using cooling devices from CoolerMaster，comapred to GeForce 8800GT, GeForce 9600GThas bigger fan opening. 　Geforce 9600GTuses DDR3 memopry from samsung，response time is 1.0ns，each memory module is 512Mbit * 32bit，has 8 modules，GeForce 9600GT memory clock is 1800Mhz。
5.Test computer specs..nothing much to translate.they just wanted to use quad core cpu and huge monitor.
6.3DMark06 just formulas and graphs.
7.Bioshock
The testing scene we picked was the first auto save point, "welcome to rapture" We use fraps to get the fps. (see graph)
8. Company of heroes,just read the screens.
9. Call Of Juarez see above
10. Crysis: If Farcry is the reason why DX9 became popular, then crysis is the Farcry for DX10.
11. Lost planet: see screens
12. NFS Pro Street: see screens
13.Dirt see screen
14. Fear (note:if a system doesnt have enough memory to run under this resolution,the score will be a 0)
15.Unreal tournament 3 see screens.
16. Conclusion:
Ok, now after you saw what the new card can do,let's wrap it up.According to the benchmarks, 9600GT is a true successor to the 8600GTs, out performing it 90% of the time, and so it def has the goods to compete against HD3850.Only in NFS pro street where 9600 and HD3850 came close,other times 9600 is just plain better than HD3850, all thanks to the 512MB of memory.
Alot of people worry about the 9600's compatibility with the upcoming DX10.1. From what we hear,96000 wont be able to support DX10.1. But still,only a handful of games in the market can successfully utilize DX10, DX10.1 is just too much for now. according to sources, the 9600GT will cost 169 USD, or 1299 Yuan. Coincidentally, this was the price of 8600 when it first came out. 8800GTS dominates the 2000+ yuan market,while 8800GT dominates the 1500~2000 range. With the arrival of HD3850, 8600GTS got kicked out of the 1000~1500 market. With the upcoming 9600GT however,the 1000~1500 market will be owned by nvidia yet again.

phew.that was my hasty translation lol.sorry i cant do better,i have school tomorrow,gotta go sleep. bye~~ hope my translation help out a lil.


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## Mussels (Jan 25, 2008)

thanks and welcome to TPU.


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## divinebaboon (Jan 26, 2008)

man this card got delayed yet again,now the date is 2/21/08
Grrrrrr
http://www.techpowerup.com/index.php?50607


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## candle_86 (Jan 26, 2008)

http://translate.google.com/transla...=s&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=Vte&sa=G

according to there will also be a G94 400, wonder how that will do


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## JrRacinFan (Jan 26, 2008)

I wonder how well this would perform @ 1440 x 900.


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## ChillyMyst (Jan 26, 2008)

nvidia again dosnt see the point in supporting the new standred, they could but they wont because it would force them to do more then small tweaks to the designs they already had.

im an 8800gt owner, its a good card, but i wouldnt say for the avg 1600x1200 gamer that its much better then a 3870 card, and i dont agree with the "ati has nothing on nvidia" thing,sure if you crank the aa ati's current card suffer, but most games are still playable(i mean other then crysis  )

anymore i dont buy low end or mid range cards, they just cant take the uses i put them to, its like putting a 4stroke dirtbike engine in a ford f450.......

the thing that pisses me off the most about nvidia at the moment is their crappy support of YV12 color spacing in video rendering, they need to fix it......i watch alot of anime and movies that are in h264/divx that by default want to use yv12, and i have to have it dissabled because in over a year nvidia hasnt found the time tofix their drivers.....


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## Mussels (Jan 26, 2008)

ChillyMyst said:


> nvidia again dosnt see the point in supporting the new standred, they could but they wont because it would force them to do more then small tweaks to the designs they already had.
> 
> im an 8800gt owner, its a good card, but i wouldnt say for the avg 1600x1200 gamer that its much better then a 3870 card, and i dont agree with the "ati has nothing on nvidia" thing,sure if you crank the aa ati's current card suffer, but most games are still playable(i mean other then crysis  )
> 
> ...



i watch a lot of H264... care to give details on this problem?


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## ChillyMyst (Jan 26, 2008)

http://mewiki.project357.com/wiki/Ffdshow_reference

read the 8800 part, it also effects other cards that use the same driver base, the current version of ffdshow seems to not use yv12 if your on a card/driver with this issue, even if yv12 in enabled, but if i go back a few revisions it still happens, so i think they gave up on nvidia fixing it and just patched around it.

it still happens with coreAVC if you have a video that wants to use YV12 color spacing, its like having a TV with rabbit ears getting bad recpetion, a ghost image to the right of the main image in another color pink or green is most common, makes it unbarable to watch videos, so you have to force RGB24 or 32 mode that use more CPU to render in.


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## Mussels (Jan 26, 2008)

Hmmm i use coreAVC and have not seen this on my 8800GT or GTX.

I dont use core AVC on my 8600GT, but i havent seen the issue on it either.
That said, i use default settings with the codecs/apps i use.

Oh and i just dont use FFDshow... try the CCCP 
http://www.cccp-project.net/


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## ChillyMyst (Jan 26, 2008)

um if your using CCCP then your using ffdshow


> 2008-01-24: Another six months (five in Australia apparently ), another CCCP! CCCP16, "Chiyo Cut, Coolness Persists". Download: WinVista/XP/2K. Changelog:
> FFDShow now has libmpeg2 included
> Updated ffdshow r1739
> Updated haali splitter to 07-12-29
> ...



cccp isnt a codec pack its ffdshow+haali splitter  and some other apps like zoom player.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_Community_Codec_Pack



> CoreWavPack
> ffdshow-tryouts (custom build)
> Gabest's FLV Splitter
> Gabest's MPV (MPEG-2) Decoder
> ...



so if you use cccp your using ffdshow 

i just install ffdshow and haali myself, personaly i hate waiting the week or so it tends to take the CCCP project to get updated.

ffdshows AVC/h264 support is now on par cpu use wise with coreAVC, but coreAVC pro 1.6 has some advanced tweaks that are nice.

Also note that it dosnt effect all avc of xvid movies, only ones that by default want to be rendered with YV12 color spacing, or where encoded using that spacing, most encodes to avc and xvid/divx today seem to be set to use other spacings, from some forums i have read this is in responce to the nvidia driver issue they just changed the default mode to get around it.

its just annoing when you hit a video that wants to use YV12 and it forced you to digg around for answers why its all screwy.(took me a week to find the link i posted to ffdshow wiki)  this isnt an ffdshow spicific error, its a driver side problem, i talked to BFG and they confermed its in the known buggs database and has been for over a year, nvidia just hasnt see fit to patch it yet, im sure they are to busy trying to get 4extra fps out of crysis to bother to fix video rendering.....


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## Mussels (Jan 26, 2008)

i install the CCCP and every last show just works. I'm ok with not being updated, as i see no issues.

Ok, so i am using FFDshow afterall. It is valid i use CCCP's version, instead of the seperate one - this may be why i dont see the issue.

It is also possible my shows are not rendered in YV12. if you have some and wish for me to test it out, PM me a link to one of the files (under 50MB would be great) and instructions on how to see what mode its using.


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## ChillyMyst (Jan 26, 2008)

ffdshows current version seems to not use yv12 on current nvidia drivers, im sure this is a workaround to fix the problem.

and the cccp version isnt any diffrent from the standalone just the standalone updates come out b4 the cccp updates come out.

the reasion i update versions is that they are alwase fixing buggs and getting cpu use down with diffren decoders, AVC for example in 1 revision update went from using 20-30% cpu to render 720p h264 viles to using 12-14%, huge improvement!!!!!


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## Mussels (Jan 26, 2008)

thats good. Being on a quad core here and an FX-62 on my media PC, CPU usage isnt really a concern. I've used coreAVC to get a pentium 4 2GHz running 720P files, that was quite a good excuse for lowered CPU usage.

With disabling yv12, is it really a huge concern? Are we missing out on any major quality?


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## ChillyMyst (Jan 26, 2008)

no, yv12 uses less cpu to decode, its just one of the possable ways to decode/display the video, rgb32 is the best quility wise but uses more cpu, i know in the days of dual/quad core its not that big a deal, but the less cpu it uses the smoother its gonna be when ur multi tasking(i watch anime and do other stuff at same time  )


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## Mussels (Jan 26, 2008)

ChillyMyst said:


> no, yv12 uses less cpu to decode, its just one of the possable ways to decode/display the video, rgb32 is the best quility wise but uses more cpu, i know in the days of dual/quad core its not that big a deal, but the less cpu it uses the smoother its gonna be when ur multi tasking(i watch anime and do other stuff at same time  )



blasphemer! you must watch anime in fullsreen with 110% attention! P

Pity that it uses more CPU power, i guess its low priority for Nv to fix.

How does one force RGB32 in FFDshow? i'd rather max my quality to be honest.


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## ChillyMyst (Jan 27, 2008)

go into the cccp start menu folder and look for the ffdshow video decoder settings button, click that, then go to bottem of the left side list and click output and uncheck all but rgp32 and 24, also can leave YV12 to RGP conversion checked as it helps with YV12 encoded videos.


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## Mussels (Jan 27, 2008)

ChillyMyst said:


> go into the cccp start menu folder and look for the ffdshow video decoder settings button, click that, then go to bottem of the left side list and click output and uncheck all but rgp32 and 24, also can leave YV12 to RGP conversion checked as it helps with YV12 encoded videos.



done that, thanks.


edit: and undone. Made avi files (especially subtitles) VERY blocky and ugly.


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## ChillyMyst (Jan 27, 2008)

humm weird, dosnt do that for me......


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