Saturday, November 15th 2008
Inno3D GeForce 9600 GSO+ Spotted
The entry of Radeon HD 4670 did disturb NVIDIA's position, in a segment touted to be one of the cash-cow segments for both NVIDIA and AMD. It is to counter the HD 4870 in its price-range (by easing production-costs), that NVIDIA released a refreshed GeForce 9600 GSO+. The die on the GPU reads "G94-201-B1", pointing that the GPU uses the 55nm silicon fab process (9600 GSO used G92). With the reduced transistor-count on the G94 core, manufacturing the chip becomes cheaper. The real change however, is that NVIDIA made some significant changes to its shader and memory domains, hence the use of G94 core.
The shader count has been reduced from 96 on the 9600 GSO, to 48. This, by disabling 16 shaders from the G94 core. The core is clocked at 650/1675 MHz (core/shader). The GPU is allowed to use the complete width of its memory bus: 256-bit GDDR3. The card features 512 MB of memory, clocked at 1800 MHz. The memory chips featured on the Inno3D card are made by Qimonda, and have a 1.2 ns latency. The card uses a simplistic circular cooler for the GPU. It is expected to be priced at US $87.
Source:
Expreview
The shader count has been reduced from 96 on the 9600 GSO, to 48. This, by disabling 16 shaders from the G94 core. The core is clocked at 650/1675 MHz (core/shader). The GPU is allowed to use the complete width of its memory bus: 256-bit GDDR3. The card features 512 MB of memory, clocked at 1800 MHz. The memory chips featured on the Inno3D card are made by Qimonda, and have a 1.2 ns latency. The card uses a simplistic circular cooler for the GPU. It is expected to be priced at US $87.
35 Comments on Inno3D GeForce 9600 GSO+ Spotted
now for the performance it surely drop down below 9600GT but for the price :rockout:
removingdisabling 25% of its shaders while retaining its memory sub-system, NV gets to sell a HD 4670-beating card cheaper for two reasons: 1) 55nm, 2) not a G92.the cooler looks pretty nice though. they need a better reference cooler, a more open one like this, that you can actually clean.
The 9600GT is quite faster than 9600GSO despite it having less SPs. As you go higher in the settings (specially AA) the difference can get abismal. The new GSO mantains the ROPs/memory width and clocks of the GT, so at higher settings, actually "normal" resolutions nowadays, above 1280*1024 with 4x AA, this card will probably be faster than the old one. In fact it could destroy it in many games (i.e. Crysis).
Look at Wizz's reviews (for example: www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Palit/Revolution_R700/27.html) and see how the 9600GT is around 18% faster overall than the GSO (in the graphs it's shown as 8%, but with base 100% of the HD4870 X2, actual difference can be extracted by: (53%/45%)=1.177; 17.7 %) and when we compare performance at 1920x1200 it's 28% higher for the GT. At 1280x1024 (2xAA in most games) is already a 20% faster. NOW the new GSO has the same architecture with 33% less SPs, so in the worst case scenario (a totally shader dependant game, which doesn't exist) the NEW GSO can only be a 33% slower than the GT. 33% theoretical (and with low probabilities) versus 20-28% real, in different situations. IMO new GSO WINS hands down.
We should just wait till reviews come out, before judging it. I have the impression the new GSO will be significantly faster in most common settings. It will not be as good at folding though.
good card for graphics but a bad card for cuda, physx, and folding
wow, Millenia, my sisters name is Millenia, thats a suprise
Maybe this comes as a surprise but CUDA does require ROPs and a good memory bandwidth. F@H and PhysX not so much, if at all, but GPGPU programs overall require them as much as SPs. That's primarily why GT200 has so many ROPs and memory bandwidth, that's why G80 had them too.
Don't get me wrong, the weight of added SPs in overall GPGPU performance is higher. But don't think that the old GSO has twice the performace because it has twice the SPs.
About PhysX... Do you honestly believe you will be able to play a 2009 PhysX enabled game on a GSO? New or old? Added physX requires some added graphical power (UT3 mod pack). It will most probably be a high-end high settings feature on games, but not as much as to need full utilisation of 96 SPs, should you use a dedicated card. My bet is that the first ones will require the use of 1 SP cluster or two at most, so that you can play with a single GTX card just well. That's 24-48 (16-32 G92's) at most. Take into account that 24 SPs on a GTX cards already have twice the power of a Quad!!
LOL
I think with the 9k you did get the upgrade for PCI-E overclocking......Dom, and Froggy did some wonders with their Palit GSO cards.
These are single card scores......by dom
Note, these scores do not have the shader cut, but does not have the smaller die as the newer cards will. Going higher in speed might be possible with the newer GSO+.....