Monday, January 14th 2008
NVIDIA GeForce 9600GT 512MB First Full Review Posted
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.
Source:
PConline.com.cn
32 Comments on NVIDIA GeForce 9600GT 512MB First Full Review Posted
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.
also, that 8800GS' memory bus is a huge handicap...
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.
Grrrrrr
www.techpowerup.com/index.php?50607
according to there will also be a G94 400, wonder how that will do :D
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 :P )
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.....
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.
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
www.cccp-project.net/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_Community_Codec_Packso 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.....
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.