The GeForce 9600 is a mid-range graphics card from the Californian company Nvidia. In this article, we will analyze all the pros and cons of this chip, find out whether its cost is justified, and also conduct some tests that will help determine the performance and stability of the chipset.
How did the map appear?
In 2008, AMD introduced the 3800 series, which occupied the niche of middle-end video cards. For a small cost, the buyer received excellent performance. AMD had no competitor in this category. Nvidia thought about creating a mid-range graphics card with good performance in order to recapture part of the market from a competitive company.
The attempt to drive the weakened flagship 8800 GT by reducing video memory failed. The cost of such boards is high enough, which in the end gave too little profit from one video card.
The company's engineers decided to create a completely new G94 platform, on which the GeForce 9600 was created. Let's see if the company's decision is justified, or Nvidia deceived themselves, as in the case of the "light" 8800? First, get acquainted with the characteristics.
GeForce 9600: specifications
The basis for the video card is the new G94 architecture, which is the direct descendant of the 8800 series platform. By architecture, this chipset stands between the average 8600 and the older 8800. The number of stream processors is twice as much as the first, but less than the second.
The new technology allowed to preserve the bit depth of the bus at 256 bits and thereby leave the performance at a good level. According to the characteristics of the video card is barely inferior to the flagship. Its throughput is increased by 15% compared with the previous generation. Simplification of the architecture allowed to save on the production of a video card.
The GeForce 9600 supports all known interfaces that were relevant at the time of the release of the board. DirectX9 and DirectX10 are also present. The card is connected to the motherboard through an absolutely standard PCI Express 16 slot. The amount of internal memory is 512 MB. The Nvidia GeForce 9600 driver is updated to this day, and the video card supports the latest versions, which is a big plus for owners of these cards.
Graphics Card Options
The standard version of the chipset includes a completely ordinary set of everything you need. In addition to the board itself, in the box you will find adapters for various interfaces, a CD with drivers, instructions and a warranty card for the GeForce 9600 GT. Video card reviews are very positive. For modest money, no one required a rich set for this hardware.
Appearance
For its value, the equipment of the video card looks quite rich. A small board has cooling in the form of a single cooler and radiator. All of this is covered with a plastic case. It looks expensive and stylish. One question remains: how will the GeForce 9600 actually behave?
Testing and Results
To conduct tests in the 3DMark application and games that were relevant at that time, a test stand with a special configuration was assembled. The basis was taken by the gaming motherboard from the company MSI, which will withstand the most severe tests. The processor from Intel (Core 2 Duo dual-core with a frequency of 2.9 GHz for each core) is also not randomly selected for testing the GeForce 9600 GT. Reviews say that video cards from Nvidia reveal their potential at 100% with Intel processors, not AMD. The power supply in the computer is set to 750 watts.
Competitors
Compare our test subject with two competitive video cards from AMD. These are HD 3850 and 3870. Both boards are in the price category up to $ 200. All 3 video cards are built on approximately the same architecture, the memory capacity of each of them is 512 MB.
The first test was the 3DMArk application. In it, the tested video card is slightly inferior to the competitor HD 3870, but keeps on par with the 3850 graphics card. Next are the tests in games that were relevant in 2008 - Prey, Crysis, Company of Heroes and classic Serious Sam 2.
The first two games are a real test for most graphics cards. Prey, surprisingly, behaved very cheerfully on all the video cards that participate in the testing. FPS did not fall at the highest settings and Full-HD resolution less than 150-160 frames per second.
Crysis is a stretch, but still does not slow down. All video cards produce stable 30 frames per second, which is enough for a comfortable game. However, for this you will have to slightly lower the settings or make the resolution smaller. The video card from AMD (HD 3870) performs slightly better - at about 5-10 frames per second.
The next test is Company of Heroes. A fairly demanding game that needs a lot of computer hardware resources. Video cards cope with it only at medium settings. On the maximum schedule, the program produces unplayable 15-20 frames per second.
Let's move on to Serious Sam 2. Oddly enough, in this game the GeForce 9600 graphics card outperforms AMD's competitors by about 20-25 frames per second. However, all representatives issue more than 100 FPS, so the difference does not play any role. Recall that all tests were conducted on the Windows Vista operating system specifically to support the DirectX10 interface. If you use the video card on DirectX9, the results will be even better and higher. All the same, this mid-range video card is not suitable for the full disclosure of DirectX10 in the most top-end games.
Verdict
The GeForce 9600 GT video card is a great option for those who want to try all the charms of DirectX10 on their hardware and still not pay a lot of money for top-end chipsets. For ordinary users who did not pursue better performance, this option was inferior to competitors from AMD. Their graphics cards cost $ 20-30 cheaper, but they produced exactly the same performance as the 9600 GT. Engineers from Nvidia developed this video card only for monetary gain, and not for the development of the lineup. This can be seen by outdated technologies and truncated parameters to reduce prices and artificially conquer the middle segment.