Last Updated on Thursday, 18 March 2010 08:02 Written by Chris Hunter Monday, 11 February 2008 12:02

Editor: Chris Hunter

Author: Matthew Bradford

News around the net spreads like wildfire when an object of techie desire is in pre-release status. It comes as no surprise that many sources have gained some insight into the upcoming 9600GT series. BHFO.org has gathered some red flags and is capping them here today.

The all-new NVIDIA GeForce 9600GT video graphics board is aimed squarely at the mid-range market, where bang for buck is essential. With the 8800GT's 112 stream processors, 600Mhz core, and 1800Mhz Ram clock, the card is loosing its cost benefits, especially now that the 9800 and 9800X2 are on their way.

The 9600GT series will make use of just 64 stream processors, a 650MHz core clock, 1625MHz Unified Shader clock, and 900MHz memory clock. Best of all, the new mainstream offering will come with a 256-bit memory bus, up from 128-bit found on the 8600GT, giving the 9600GT 57.6GB/s of memory bandwidth. Further documentation from NVIDIA claims the 9600 GT will also support the Quantum Effects physics-processing engine.

The GeForce 8600GT was released running a 540MHz GPU clock, and it had the option to use 128MB or 256MB of 128-bit GDDR3 memory at a 700MHz clock. The 9600GT will easily outperform the previous incarnations, however the specifications released suggests that the 8800GT will still have a sizable performance edge.

The new 9600GT will be released on Feb28th at a MSRP of 169.99USD for the 256MB offering and 189.99USD for the 512MB version. Both variants utilize 256-bit GDDR3 memory. These price points are higher than initially expected, even though the video card is set to replace the outdated 8600GT, which weighed in at an original release price of approximately 150USD. The 9600GT is built to be less robust than the 8800GT, which is in roughly the same price range at an average of just 229.00 USD for the 512MB GDDR3 version.

Perhaps a beefier "GTS" version, following NVIDIA's usual naming convention, will produce specs on par with the performance of the 8800GT. Wishful thinking it would seem, unless the 9600's G94 core with 64 stream processors performs greater than the G92's 112+ stream processors. Aftermarket manufacturers may be able to modify the reference 9600 series like the 8600GT's from XFX, BFG tech, and several others. They tinker with overclocking of the memory, shaders and GPU core for a price premium. There are also advanced cooling options that further heighten the efficiency and performance envelope of these factory-tuned monsters of their time.

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