# Galaxy GeForce 9500 GT Overclocked 512 MB



## W1zzard (Jul 30, 2008)

NVIDIA recently launched the GeForce 9500 GT. This low-end card in the GeForce 9 Series is designed to offer acceptable gaming performance for the small wallet. Galaxy has created an overclocked edition which runs at higher clocks and comes with a quiet heatpipe cooling solution. In our testing we saw amazing overclocking potential of over 35% compared to the reference design clocks.

*Show full review*


----------



## newtekie1 (Aug 1, 2008)

Damn, I wish it was already 55nm, I would love to see the overclocking numbers then.  Though it is nice to see this overclocks past 8600GTS speeds.  I expected the price to be a little more reasonable though.


----------



## PCpraiser100 (Aug 1, 2008)

newtekie1 said:


> Damn, I wish it was already 55nm, I would love to see the overclocking numbers then.  Though it is nice to see this overclocks past 8600GTS speeds.  I expected the price to be a little more reasonable though.



Tell me about it


----------



## OzzmanFloyd120 (Aug 1, 2008)

Hmm, not exactly an enthusiast card, huh?


----------



## cdawall (Aug 1, 2008)

wow looks like another useless card  should be good in what HTPC? or just as a newer 8600GTS


----------



## ShadowFold (Aug 1, 2008)

cdawall said:


> wow looks like another useless card  should be good in what HTPC? or just as a newer 8600GTS



All you really need for a HTPC is a 780G. Even my 740G does great in 1080p.


----------



## OzzmanFloyd120 (Aug 1, 2008)

Man, this is really in-depth. I'm shocked W1z put so much work into a really crappy card.


----------



## cdawall (Aug 1, 2008)

ShadowFold said:


> All you really need for a HTPC is a 780G. Even my 740G does great in 1080p.



yea i know i have a 780G maybe just a cheap upgrade card for people still with things like 6600s?


----------



## ShadowFold (Aug 1, 2008)

cdawall said:


> yea i know i have a 780G maybe just a cheap upgrade card for people still with things like 6600s?



Oh yea for sure. I might recommend one to my friend who still games on a 7300GT lol


----------



## candle_86 (Aug 1, 2008)

this is agreat baseline card, my 8600GTS ran Crysis on medium 10x7 @ around 40FPS, so id have to say this isnt a terrible card at all for its price braket. If you look you see a few things, one is the 8600GTS has managed to equal the 7900GTX in most games now thanks to drivers, and the 9500GT ties the 8600GTS. This is normal for cards as generations improve, except the 9600GT did not catch the 8800GTX lol


----------



## Winterwind (Aug 1, 2008)

its written in the specs table(page 1) that core is 800MHz.
and in "oc page" you say "The final overclocks of our card are 761 MHz core (9% overclock)"

761MHz is slower than 800MHz stated on page 1


----------



## Ketxxx (Aug 1, 2008)

Damn that card really shows how anything with a lesser spec than a 8800GT \ 3870 or better really hasn't got the snuff to cut the mustard these days. Crysis chews that card up and spits it out in a gory mess.


----------



## [I.R.A]_FBi (Aug 1, 2008)

grand waste of 89 dollars?


----------



## Ketxxx (Aug 1, 2008)

I wouldn't even waste time looking in its direction, nevermind $89


----------



## newtekie1 (Aug 1, 2008)

Ketxxx said:


> Damn that card really shows how anything with a lesser spec than a 8800GT \ 3870 or better really hasn't got the snuff to cut the mustard these days. Crysis chews that card up and spits it out in a gory mess.



Wow, I've seen some pretty ignorant statements come from you, but this one takes that cake.

You definitely don't need an 8800GT or 3870 to play games.  If you are looking to get into computer gaming, please don't listen to ignorant people like this.  You don't need to spend huge amounts of money to do it.  A $70 9500GT will play every game, including Crysis.  And you can build a complete computer capable of playing any game out, including Crysis, for $500.


----------



## OzzmanFloyd120 (Aug 1, 2008)

newtekie1 said:


> A $70 9500GT will play every game, including Crysis.



Well yeah, a 5700FX can play crysis too, but it won't be any fun.


----------



## newtekie1 (Aug 1, 2008)

OzzmanFloyd120 said:


> Well yeah, a 5700FX can play crysis too, but it won't be any fun.



You know what I meant.  The $70 9500GT will play Crysis, and it will be an enjoyable experience.  Setting the game to Medium Settings@1024x768 is still an enjoyable experience, and the 9500GT will handle it just fine.  You won't get all the fancy eye candy, but the game will still be enjoyable.  People need to realize that games don't have to be played at the Maximum Graphical settings to be fun.  If making the game slightly less pretty takes the fun away from the game, then the game isn't worth playing in the first place.

Granted, I wouldn't pay $89 just for a fancy cooler on the thing.  In that price range the 8800GS/9600GSO is a much better buy.


----------



## niko084 (Aug 1, 2008)

While not an amazing card, it seems that they scale very well, considering the 9500gt vs 9500gt oc numbers.


----------



## cdawall (Aug 1, 2008)

newtekie1 said:


> You know what I meant.  The $70 9500GT will play Crysis, and it will be an enjoyable experience.  Setting the game to Medium Settings@1024x768 is still an enjoyable experience, and the 9500GT will handle it just fine.  You won't get all the fancy eye candy, but the game will still be enjoyable.  People need to realize that games don't have to be played at the Maximum Graphical settings to be fun.  If making the game slightly less pretty takes the fun away from the game, then the game isn't worth playing in the first place.
> 
> Granted, I wouldn't pay $89 just for a fancy cooler on the thing.  In that price range the 8800GS/9600GSO is a much better buy.



just to point this out the thing better be able to do better than med@1024x768 because i could do that on a 7800GS/3000+@stock/1GB DDR400 so if all it can do is medium that it is a waste of money...considering you can get 8600GT/s cards for ~$60


----------



## newtekie1 (Aug 1, 2008)

cdawall said:


> just to point this out the thing better be able to do better than med@1024x768 because i could do that on a 7800GS/3000+@stock/1GB DDR400 so if all it can do is medium that it is a waste of money...considering you can get 8600GT/s cards for ~$60



Right now, it is just an 8600GT/S, so if it costs any more, it is a waste of money.  Once they switch to 55nm, it might be worth a little more(~$10 more is all I would pay).

However, my main point was that the Crysis benchmark used here makes the numbers look worse than they really are because all the settings are set to High.  Adjusting even a few settings(Post Processing being a major one) to medium will yeild playable framerates at 1024x768.  My x800XL handles Crysis at 1024x768 with most of the settings on medium, one or two on low and the game is still enjoyable.


----------



## candle_86 (Aug 1, 2008)

agreed buddy plays Crysis on his GO7600GS at low/medium settings @ 10x7 just fine.


----------



## Wester547 (Aug 2, 2008)

I concur wholeheartedly. Not everyone needs an 8800 GTX or Radeon HD 4870 to game contently. I'm of the train of thought that this generation has become rather spoiled (with no offense) because everything has to be at 1920x1200+ with 4x FSAA and at 50-60+FPS (bar Crysis).... or it's the end of the world?

A 9500 GT will play UT3 and Call of Duty 4 fine at 1280x1024 w/16x AF and everything else enabled save FSAA. Even Bioshock can look well enough and be played at decent frame-rates on this card. The games do not look lamentable at those settings. They do not look as stunning as the greatest of visuals would, but they do *not* look bad. To top that off, the 9500 GT has 80% of the 8600 GTS' memory bandwidth, and yet even at complete stock speeds is basically on equal footing. Oh, and let's not forget pixel and texel fill rates: over a 20% disadvantage, yet with 25 million more transistors (being one of the advantages of the 9500 GT, but not a sterling one). Greater archiecture obviously yields its benefits here, and the 9500 GT can pump 44,800 shader operations a second - the 8600 GTS does 46,400 by contrast. While I'm not saying raw power is paltry. It certainly isn't and any 8600/9500 board will show its fatal drawback when you turn on FSAA, especially at higher resolutions... or, rather, just play games that opt for traditional pixel and texture ops rather than shader architecture, and games like that only put the 8600 GTS on par with a rather old 7800 GT and not ahead of even a 7600 GT by that great a length... it also brings half the performance of a 7900 GTX/X1950 XTX. That's what you sacrifice with a 128-bits wide memory bus, reduced ROPs, and other things. It will be intriguing to see the day when 256-bit boards finally make their way to the low-end.

I'm just saying that these spree of games in this generation benefit a great deal from new architecture as we've seen for well over a year now. As for being on equal footing with the 7900 GTX... the 8600 GTS may be able to go toe to toe with it (as can a 9500 GT, and even a 8600 GT isn't far behind) in today's games, it still can't touch a X1950 XTX. Notice how well a X1950 XTX still does in today's games, easily surpassing a 7900 GTX? That's a good number of pixel rendering pipelines and raw power for you, as the X1950 XTX has 64GB/s of memory bandwidth, which is still more than a lot of mid-end boards today. Two years later, a X1950 XTX is still not that weak a board. 

The R300 generation called to a similar nature: a Radeon 9700 Pro was still able to run games decently two years after its release. As such, nVidia's 8800 GTX has followed a similar skeleton: these boards are made for long term use, and I see that as a great thing. By this I'm not saying that a GTX 280 or Radeon HD 4870 X2 will be ruled out two years later (but who knows?), just that I'm quite impressed by what nVidia and ATi have been able to assure with their hardware. 

But I digress. I'm getting off-topic. I think the 9500 GT is a great board for the price, noticeably better than a 8600 GT with hardware specs that are not too significantly better. It has great overclocking capacity as well, though I feel people should recollect that not everyone is an overclocker. It's no 8800 GT or HD 4850, but for a "casual" and "less hardcore" gamer (as it's deemed so today) it's just dandy.


----------



## Pinchy (Aug 2, 2008)

I get all this talk about how some people don't care about max graphics and med is good enough...but when you can get an 8800GT for $35 more ($125 after rebate) it makes me wonder why you wouldnt spend the extra money and futureproof yourself / enjoy games more nowadays coz u can put on the eye candy.

If it was priced at what a low end card should be priced at (say $50-60)...it would be reasonable.


Also....what room will this leave for something like a 9600GT?


----------



## newtekie1 (Aug 2, 2008)

Pinchy said:


> I get all this talk about how some people don't care about max graphics and med is good enough...but when you can get an 8800GT for $35 more ($125 after rebate) it makes me wonder why you wouldnt spend the extra money and futureproof yourself / enjoy games more nowadays coz u can put on the eye candy.
> 
> If it was priced at what a low end card should be priced at (say $50-60)...it would be reasonable.
> 
> ...



This Galaxy version is definitely overpriced.  With the 8800GS/9600GSO being priced in the same price point, and being much better, I wouldn't even look at this Galaxy card.

  However, the standard 9500GT is price a little more reasonably, and you have to realize the card just came out, so prices will be a little higher, they will setle down a week or two after launch.  The price on the standard 9500GT is $70, which isn't that bad for the price point, a similarly equiped 8600GT goes for the same $70 price.


----------



## Pinchy (Aug 2, 2008)

newtekie1 said:


> This Galaxy version is definitely overpriced.  With the 8800GS/9600GSO being priced in the same price point, and being much better, I wouldn't even look at this Galaxy card.
> 
> However, the standard 9500GT is price a little more reasonably, and you have to realize the card just came out, so prices will be a little higher, they will setle down a week or two after launch.  The price on the standard 9500GT is $70, which isn't that bad for the price point, a similarly equiped 8600GT goes for the same $70 price.



Yeah I wasnt talking about the 9500GT in general...just this version.

It seems kind of stupid charging so much extra. When your on a budget, as much as you would like to care about temps and better cooling, your always going to be more concerned about your price/performace.

But yeah even as you said with the card just being released being more expensive....soo true.


----------



## eidairaman1 (Aug 3, 2008)

COD4 on 1280x1024 looks like crap for this card, mine plays it just fine at that resolution.


----------



## Wester547 (Aug 4, 2008)

eidairaman1 said:


> COD4 on 1280x1024 looks like crap for this card, mine plays it just fine at that resolution.


Remember that 2x FSAA/8x AF is enabled and it's a 128-bit board; the OCed one isn't significantly afar from a HD 3850 at those settings in frame-rates, which is impressive considering the prodigious divide in raw hardware specifications between the two boards.


----------



## eidairaman1 (Aug 4, 2008)

Wester547 said:


> Remember that 2x FSAA/8x AF is enabled and it's a 128-bit board; the OCed one isn't significantly afar from a HD 3850 at those settings in frame-rates, which is impressive considering the prodigious divide in raw hardware specifications between the two boards.



ahem, 1950 Pro, AGP get it right.


----------



## candle_86 (Aug 4, 2008)

even @ 89 bucks its not bad, there are other concerns to consider also, someone might wish to upgrade there computer but not sure if the PSU can handle it, i had to do this in a new dell Core2 Quad 6600 but with an 8400GS, PSU was rated 300W max, he opted not to get the bigger PSU with it, so we stuck an 8600GT in it to be safe, this card works in that perfect


----------



## MilkyWay (Aug 4, 2008)

so if a 3850 is only a little more this would be useless

even if you dont need the power of the 3850 it would be stupid to get a lower end card round about the same price

its like buying a 2 litre of coca cola and then you notice the 2 stuck together that cost £2 which is 50p more than a single 2 litre


----------



## Wester547 (Aug 4, 2008)

eidairaman1 said:


> ahem, 1950 Pro, AGP get it right.


http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Galaxy/GeForce_9500_GT_Overclocked/6.html

Look at the page itself. That's a Radeon HD 3850 512MB card, not an X1950 Pro board in AGP 8x. There's about a 22% spread between the OC'ed 9500 GT and the HD 3850 in COD4 at 1280x1024 w/2x FSAA & 8x AF.

And useless... I wouldn't deem the card so. At $70, it's not a deplorable deal. Not every gamer needs to play at 1920x1200 w/4x FSAA @ 40-60+FPS, as aforesaid...

The 9600 GT also is a tad slower than the 7900 GTX in Prey at those same settings.. on and off-handed note. A tad shocked there, but I guess that's moot given the results after.


----------



## zithe (Aug 5, 2008)

newtekie1 said:


> Damn, I wish it was already 55nm, I would love to see the overclocking numbers then.  Though it is nice to see this overclocks past 8600GTS speeds.  I expected the price to be a little more reasonable though.



I'd say the increase of 10mhz is worth the 10 dollars. /sarcasm

It's not a bad card. Not good either, but it could be worse...

What if it was a rebadged *groans* FX SERIES. :O


----------



## eidairaman1 (Aug 5, 2008)

Wester547 said:


> http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Galaxy/GeForce_9500_GT_Overclocked/6.html
> 
> Look at the page itself. That's a Radeon HD 3850 512MB card, not an X1950 Pro board in AGP 8x. There's about a 22% spread between the OC'ed 9500 GT and the HD 3850 in COD4 at 1280x1024 w/2x FSAA & 8x AF.
> 
> ...



I was comparing my card to that 9500, Mine is 3-4 Gens behind and it handles COD 4 SP/MP at 1280x1024, just fine.


----------

