NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT Graphic cards

Part 1: Theory and architecture
Much time has passed since the launch of Mid-End NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS (G84). Unlike the top solution (G80), it had very few ALUs and TMUs, and this product failed to provide the expected performance level. The performance gap between the GeForce 8800 GTX and the GeForce 8600 GTS was too wide. Later on, AMD and NVIDIA launched graphics cards of a higher level: the GeForce 8800 GT and the RADEON HD 3870. But AMD also offered the Low-End HD 3850 to compete with the GeForce 8600 GTS. A better fabrication process and a much earlier launch gave AMD a performance advantage, and the HD 3850 was much faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS in many applications.

And now NVIDIA announces the G94 chip, based on the overhauled G9x unified architecture. The GeForce 9600 GT based on this GPU pushes the GeForce 8600 GTS down in the price line. The new solution ranks in between the 8800 GT and the 8600 GTS. The GeForce 9600 GT is based on the G94, which differs from the G92 only in fewer unified processors and texture units, bringing a 256-bit bus into the segment of cards below $200. Thus, the key features of the G94 are a 256-bit memory bus, and fewer ALUs and TMUs. Let's examine the new solution from NVIDIA...

Before you read this article, you may want to study the baseline theoretical articles: DX Current, DX Next, and Longhorn. They describe various aspects of modern graphics cards and architectural peculiarities of products from NVIDIA and AMD.


GeForce 9600 GT
Codename: G94
Fabrication process: 65 nm
505 million transistors
Unified architecture with an array of common processors for streaming processing of vertices and pixels, as well as other data
Hardware support for DirectX 10, including new Shader Model 4.0, geometry generation, and stream output
256-bit memory bus, four independent 64-bit controllers
Core clock: 650 MHz (GeForce 9600 GT)
ALUs operate at more than a doubled frequency (1.625 GHz for the GeForce 9600 GT)
64 scalar floating-point ALUs (integer and floating-point formats, support for FP32 according to IEEE 754, MAD+MUL without penalties)
32 texture address units, support for FP16 and FP32 components in textures
32 bilinear filtering units (like in the G84 and the G92, it gives more bilinear samples, but no free trilinear filtering and effective anisotropic filtering)
Dynamic branching in pixel and vertex shaders
4 wide ROPs (16 pixels) supporting antialiasing with up to 16 samples per pixel, including FP16 or FP32 frame buffer. Each unit consists of an array of flexibly configurable ALUs and is responsible for Z generation and comparison, MSAA, blending. Peak performance of the entire subsystem is up to 64 MSAA samples (+ 64 Z) per cycle, in Z only mode — 128 samples per cycle
Multiple render targets (up to 8 buffers)
All interfaces (2xRAMDAC, 2xDual DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort) are integrated into the chip


Specifications of the reference GeForce 9600 GT
Core clock: 650 MHz
Frequency of unified processors: 1625 MHz
Unified processors: 64
32 texture units, 16 blending units
Effective memory clock: 1.8 GHz (2*900 MHz)
Memory type: GDDR3
Memory: 512 MB
Memory bandwidth: 57.6 GB/sec
Maximum theoretical fill rate: 10.4 gigapixel per second
Theoretical texture sampling rate: 20.8 gigatexel per second
2 x DVI-I Dual Link, 2560x1600 video output
SLI connector
PCI Express 2.0
TV-Out, HDTV-Out, support for HDMI and DisplayPort with HDCP
Power consumption: up to 95 W
Recommended price: $169-$189

more..