![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Thursday , February 21, 2008
- Author:
- Brent Justice
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
BFGTech GeForce 9600 GT OC
The new GeForce 9600 GT is poised to deliver high performance for under $200. We take the new BFGTech GeForce 9600 GT OC for a spin in Crysis, COD 4, and UT3 to test its mettle. Is your hard earned cash better spent on a Radeon HD 3850, Radeon HD 3870, or GeForce 8800 GT.
Introduction
Satisfying a high level of gaming performance below the $200 price point is important to both NVIDIA and AMD. The sub-$200 market allows a greater number of people to afford a gaming video card and more cards will be sold here than anywhere else. Until now, NVIDIA hasn’t really had anything to compete with AMD’s latest offerings below $200. The GeForce 8600 GTS was NVIDIA’s fastest GPU for under $200. As we found out , the GeForce 8600 simply could not compete with the likes of AMD’s ATI Radeon HD 3850. The Radeon HD 3850, with an MSRP of $179 greatly impressed us as it provided a solid gaming experience at a very affordable price. Now it is time for NVIDIA to step up to the plate to try and one-up AMD by offering a better sub-$200 video card, based on their current architecture.
GeForce 9600 GT
The GeForce 9600 GT continues in the same G90 series vein of the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB and GeForce 8800 GT. All three GPUs share the same architecture and transistor improvements over the older G80 GPUs. Part of these transistor improvements includes a new compression technology we posted news about last month. The improvement is both a physical one and software one that allows better data compression on the 256-bit memory bus. The GeForce 9600 GT also inherits this new technology which should help maintain higher performance at higher resolutions with AA.
The GeForce 9600 GT is made up of 505 million transistors at 65 nm and contains 64 stream processors, compared to the 8800 GT’s 112, and the 8800 GTS 512MB’s 128. There are 16 ROPs inside and the GPU can do 32 bilinear filtered texels per clock. The core clock is set at 650MHz with a shader clock of 1.625GHz. You will find 512MB of GDDR3 memory standard on the 9600 GT clocked at 1.8GHz on a 256-bit bus. Only one 6-pin power connector is required and this video card is specified at a maximum of 95 watts at full load. The GeForce 9600 GT reference design is a single-slot video card, though you will see some unique models from add-in-board partners with double-slot cooling solutions.
As mentioned, this is a sub-$200 video card, and the MSRP will be $169-$189. Since we saw the 8800 GT and 8800 GTS 512MB selling well above MSRP at launch, we were expect the 9600 GT prices to be around the higher $190 mark at launch. But from the looks of things, the MSRP price range is being hit by Newegg at least. Even an EVGA Superclocked version with 512MB of RAM and 675MHz core clock is selling for $179.99 while an even higher 700MHz clocked version is selling for $189.99. Certainly, these cards at MSRP is something great to see for a change from NVIDIA.
BFGTech GeForce 9600 GT OC
The BFGTech GeForce 9600 GT OC is clocked higher than NVIDIA’s reference clock speeds. BFGTech has pushed the GPU up to 675MHz, a small 25MHz bump from the standard 650MHz. The memory, however, has not been overclocked at all, which remains at 900MHz (1.8GHz DDR.)
NVIDIA and BFGTech are both confident that the GeForce 9600 GT is quite capable of pushing games on a display in the 23”-28” range. This is noted on the back of the BFGTech box. We will be testing the BFGTech GeForce 9600 GT on a 24” LCD to see if this video card can play games at high widescreen resolutions.
The BFGTech GeForce 9600 GT is based on NVIDIA’s reference design, with reference heatsink, fan, and shroud. As you can see NVIDIA is continuing the full-length video card shroud that covers the PCB from stem to stern. The fan on the 9600 GT is much larger than that found on a GeForce 8800 GT. That means it should push more air with less noise since. Hot air is exhausted into the computer chassis through the top of the video card.
In the final picture above is a size comparison with a GeForce 8800 GT, you will see that they are exactly the same size in length and width.
One 6-pin auxiliary power connector is required for operation. SLI is of course supported on this video card and there is support for the new display port which you will see on some add-in-board partner video cards. BFGTech includes a Molex to 6-pin adapter cable, two DVI to VGA adapters, an HDTV output cable with driver CD, and a quick install guide.