Published in Reviews

Gainward 9600 GT GS brings DisplayPort

by on26 February 2008

Index




Geforce G92 is the new mainstream card, a successor to Geforce 8600, but thanks to great characteristics of its G94 graphics chip, this card's capabilities far exceed those of its predecessor. Gainward overclocked their 9600 GT card, and you’ll see that performance was significantly better than reference card’s.


Testbed:

Motherboard:
EVGA 680i SLI (Supplied by EVGA)

Processor:
Intel Core 2 Duo 6800 Extreme edition (Supplied by Intel)

Memory:
OCZ FlexXLC PC2 9200 5-5-5-18  (Supplied by OCZ)
        while testing CL5-5-5-15-CR2T 1066MHz at 2.2V

PSU:
OCZ Silencer 750 Quad Black ( Supplied by OCZ)

Hard disk:
Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 80GB SATA (Supplied by Seagate)

CPU-Cooler:
Freezer 7 Pro (Supplied by Artic Cooling)

Case Fans:
Artic Cooling - Artic Fan 12 PWM
Artic Cooling - Artic Fan 8 PWM

ATI Driver:

 

Sample-R680_xp_vista_8-451-2-080123a
8-1_xp32_dd_ccc_wdm_enu_57717

Nvidia Driver:

169.21_forceware_winxp_32bit_english_whql
169.28_forceware_winxp_32bit_english_beta
171.16_forceware_winxp_32bit_english_ for 9600GT


Futuremarks

Gainward BLISS 9600 GT is second in line, followed by Zotac 9600 GT AMP. Zotac’s core runs at 725MHz but the memory and shader speeds are identical to those on Gainward’s card.


Image

In the first tests we did, Geforce 9600 GT outperformed the Geforce 8800 GS. In 3DMark 06, 9600GT beat the 8800 GS with 384MB by 15%. Compared to the reference card in 3DMark06, Gainward’s 9600 GT GS was better by 6%, Zotac’s 9600 GT AMP by 7%, while 3DMark03 resulted in Gainward’s best score – 7% better than reference. 9600 GT’s results clearly show that the G94 processor scales well when overclocked.

In 3DMark06, the old 8600 GT was slower by up to 68% compared to reference 9600 GT.
 
Gaming

Image

In Crysis, Gainward's overclocked 9600 GT GS handles higher speeds well and beats the reference 9600 GT by 10%. At “high” settings, Geforce 8600 GT with 256MB of 128 bit memory can’t handle Crysis, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t play games with it. At “medium” settings, 8600 GTS will prove to be enough for pleasant gaming. 8800 GT beat Gainward 9600 GT and Zotac 9600 GT AMP by 17% and the reference 9600 GT by 29%.

Image

In F.E.A.R., the G94 chip on Gainward’s 9600 GT card put on quite a show. It ran on par with the 8800 GT, whereas it beat the reference 9600 GT by up to 11%. Radeon HD 3870 and 3850 cards ran slower.

Gainward’s and Zotac’s 9600 GT cards have the same memory and shader speeds, but we see that additional 25MHz on Zotac’s card brings 1-3 fps more.

 Image

The Geforce 8800 GS can stand up to a reference 9600 GT, but Zotac’s OC card runs up to 11% better. As we increased the resolution the 8800 GT increased its lead over our 9600 GT. In the initial phase the difference was 15% whereas the highest tested resolution results in almost 30% advantage over Gainward and almost 40% over reference 9600 GT.

Image

On all the resolutions below 1920x1440, the new 9600 GT churns out double the performance of an 8600 GTS.

Image

With no AA and AF, Radeon cards run much better and HD 3870 beats the 9600 GT. In other scenarios Geforce 9600 GT ran faster or on par with ATI's HD 3870. In World in Conflict, Gainward’s 9600 GT GS ran a bit slower than Zotac's 9600 GT AMP, whereas both cards were close to the 8800 GT.


Conclusion

Gainward BLISS 9600 GT Golden Sample is a card that packs a lot of multimedia outs. At the same time it’s one of the first cards that bring DisplayPort. The card is overclocked to 700+MHz core, 1750MHz shader and 2000+MHz for memory. To ensure that this card runs stable, Gainward used their in-house quiet dual-slot cooler.

This card is great for gaming and it’ll cost you around €175. It’s a great successor to 8600 GTS that slowly shows signs of time. Price/performance ratio is close to that on 8800 GT cards, so if you can’t spare enough money for an 8800 GT, we sincerely recommend a 9600 GT with 512MB of memory.

Gainward's 9600 GT GS card comes with all the cabling required to make this an excellent multimedia card, and if you ever decide on buying a DisplayPort monitor you won’t regret it as this card features DisplayPort too.


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Last modified on 27 February 2008
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