Author: Kevin Spiess
Editor: Howard Ha
Publish Date: Thursday, February 21st, 2008
Originally Published on Neoseeker (http://www.neoseeker.com)
Article Link: http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/palit9600gtsonic/
Copyright Neo Era Media, Inc. - please do not redistribute or use for commercial purposes.
The ninth generation of NVIDIA's GeForce series is now here!
It's amazing how fast GPU (and gaming) technology develops. Time marches on, and video card technology races into the future. The difference between the state of the gaming art in 2008, and the state of the gaming art in 2004, is downright incredible. What future games will look like will be even harder to believe -- and today, we are one small step closer to this future, as the 8th generation of NVIDIA's GeForce passes into the 9th.
The 9600GT series is aimed to dominate the mid-range of graphic card options, and we are going to check out in depth. We're going to bench it against 9 other cards, and we also have some SLI numbers to look at, so hang on to your hats.
Today we will be looking at a 9600 GT design from Palit: the GeForce 9600GT Sonic. While the competition between the $170 and $235 mark is fierce with NVIDIA's 8800 GT 256/512 MB, and ATI's recently price-cut HD 3850/3870 in the fray, the competition is just about to go up another notch: the 9600 GT will be priced around $190 initially, putting it right into the thick of things. Our Palit 9600GT Sonic will be retailing for a little bit more than this standard 9600GT price, at a MSRP of $219 -- but as you'll see soon, it is not a standard 9600GT.
Overview of the 9600 GT
While perhaps not as concept-smashing as was the introduction of the 8800 GTX, the 9600 GT nonetheless shows how far the advancement of GPU technology has come as we enter the early months of 2008.
There is nothing that stands out as revolutionary in the design of 9600GT -- instead, this latest release from NVIDIA is just one more incrementally improved and further optimized step along the road of graphical goodness. Truth be told, the 9600GT does not look like that much of a departure from the 8800GT -- they even look quite similar.
So similar, in fact, that I should tell you which one is which: the 9600GT is on top, and the 8800GT on the bottom:
At the heart of the 9600GT, we have the G94/D9P GPU. NVIDIA believes that one of the strongest new features of the 9600GT is the optimization of the G94's stream processors. These new stream processors operate at a frequency 20% higher than the first-generation of stream processors released with the 8800 GTX. The 9600GT has only 64 stream processors, yet should compete quite well to other NVIDIA cards with around twice this amount of SP's thanks to these new optimizations.
The 9600GT's texture engine has also been retooled: It now has twice the addressing capabilities, and can process eight texels per cycle. The ROP sub-system has also been improved, specifically for performance at high resolutions.
That's all the big changes brought with the 9600GT. Let's see what Palit has to say on the matter, and take a look at the 9600GT Sonic.
Impressions
While the reference design 9600 GT looks a lot like a standard 8800 GT, the Palit GeForce 9600GT Sonic looks like like neither. The first thing you'll notice about the 9600GT Sonic is its rather startling, attention-grabbing orange plastic 'cage' that encloses the video card. While the reference design 9600GT has a single-slot design, the 9600GT Sonic is definitely a double-width card.
From what I can see, the plastic cage does little to direct the cooling air coming from the fan towards the surface of the PCB. Instead of directing hot air out of the rear of your card (and out of your case), air flows from the fan in all directions. This isn't necessarily a bad thing as the heatsink on this card appears quite capable of achieving the requisite cooling; it has numerous lengthy aluminum heat fins, attached to the GPU by a layer of copper. The cooling is further assisted by two copper heat pipes running through the fins.
Back to the orange cage for a moment though -- it does seem a little unnecessary due to its size. Depending on your motherboard, you may have to reposition your SATA connectors. Furthermore, the cage might make a perfect prison for dust bunnies, which are known to frequent computer cases.
Size-wise, the Palit GeForce 9600GT Sonic is large for a mid-range card. It has a length the 8800GT, coming in at just over 22 cm's.
On left: XFX 8800 GTS 512, Palit 9600GT Sonic, VisionTek HD3870 On right: XFX 8800 GTS 512, Palit 9600GT Sonic, XFX 8800 GT .
Specifications
| Palit 9600GT Sonic | 9600GT | 8800GT 512MB | 8800GT 256MB | HD 3870 | HD 3850 | |
| Stream Processors | 64 | 64 | 112 | 112 | 320 | 320 |
| Core Clock | 700 | 650 | 600 | 600 | 775 | 668 |
| Shader Clock | 1750 | 1625 | 1500 | 1500 | 775 | 668 |
| Memory Clock | 2000 | 1800 | 1800 | 1800 | 2250 | 1656 |
| Memory Interface | 256 bit | 256 bit | 256 bit | 256 bit | 256 bit | 256 bit |
| Memory Type | 512 MB GDDR3 | 512MB GDDR3 | 512MB GDDR3 | 256MB GDDR3 | 512MB GDDR4 | 256MB GDDR3 |
| Memory Bandwidth (GB/s) | 64.0 | 57.6 | 57.6 | 57.6 | 72.0 | 52.9 |
| Texture Fillrate (billion/sec) | 22.4 | 20.8 | 33.6 | 33.6 | 12.4 | 10.6 |
| Fabrication Process | 65nm | 65nm | 65nm | 65nm | 55nm | 55nm |
The chart above lays out the vital numbers within the tight competition of the current mid-range cards. As you can see, our Palit 9600GT Sonic is a factory-overclocked card. Palit will be selling a non-overclocked 9600GT with a smaller heatsink, but for many, those beefy increases to the clock speeds -- and the superior cooler -- will be very tempting for the extra $30 or so.
The 9600GT is DirectX 10.0 compatible, has Shader Model 4.0 support, and is a PCI Express 2.0 card. And similar to most of the cards from the 'old' 8th generation cards, the 9600GT features NVIDIA's PureVideo HD decoder, which improves HD playback, and unloads the processing of HD content off of your CPU, and onto your GPU.
Take a look at all those ports! Palit did a nice job here: in addition to the standard 2 DVI ports, there is also a HDMI port, and a SPDIF port for audio. And new for the 9600GT, we now have a DisplayPort. as well. Get used to these DisplayPorts, as they are going to be come the new 'de facto' interface standard for digital displays. Designed by VESA, one DisplayPort is capable of higher performance than a dual link DVI interface, and can carry audio signals as well.
Power Usage
To measure power usage, we used a Kill A Watt P4400 power meter. Note that the above numbers represent the power drain for the entire benchmarking system, not just the video cards themselves. For the 'idle' readings we measured the power drain from the desktop, with no applications running; for the 'load' situation, we ran a demanding part of 3DMark06.
It looks like the 9600GT is definitely not a power hog, and uses even less power the 55nm HD 3870, which is impressive. Idling around the 139 Watt level is quite good -- and at load, it saps about as much juice as a 8800GT, which isn't that bad either.
On the topic of power, one thing that was not mentioned earlier is a unique quality that both the Palit 9600GT and Palit 9600GT Sonic share. Whereas the standard 9600GT has a 2 phase power distribution system, the Palit cards have a 3 phase power distribution system. What does this mean exactly? Well, basically it means that voltage is better regulated to give a more stable power supply to your card. As DC current is in a constant state of fluctuation, you can see 3 phase power adding another steadying 'step' to these oscillation voltages, which softens the peaks and valleys of your power distribution. According to Palit, by having 3 phase power, you're going to extend the life of circuitry, as well as lower the operating temperature of your 9600GT.
SLI
SLI has come a long way this year. NVIDIA has been improving SLI to a new level of efficiency, as well as introducing 3-Way SLI, for the top-end cards, such as the 8800 Ultra.
For our benchmarking games that we tested, half of them benefited significantly by SLI. For the other three games, the benefits were negligible -- but this will most likely change with future driver releases. For the SLI scaling that was working, performance gains often ranged between a 40% to 50% increase in frame rates when the second card was activated. This isn't too bad, especially at this early point. These performance gains are similar than can be had with a 8800 GT SLI setup -- which is not a surprise, I suppose, considering the shared DNA between these two cards.
The 9600GT makes for an attractive SLI solution, due to the relative low price of a pair of cards. However, in almost any case, you are still better off going with a single card, such as a 8800 GTS 512MB, than picking up a pair of 9600GT's off of the get-go. The strength of SLI still lies in having that upgrade path open to you in the future. Especially as the price of video cards continually fall.
Overclocking
The cooling solution on the Palit 9600GT Sonic looked fairly effective, so overclocking prospects looked good. Although the Palit 9600GT Sonic edition is a factory-overclocked model, with the core clock boost of 50 MHz, a memory clock increase of 200 MHz, and a hearty shader clock push of 125 MHz, we were hoping that we'd people push it to even further heights.
The Palit 9600GT Sonic comes with its own utility called 'VDOTool', that is similar in design to Expertool packaged with Gainward cards. It is a nice program -- little resource overhead, but with extensive functionality. As always, we set the fan manually to run at 100%, and started increasing our clock speeds by 10 MHz increments until we hit walls.
Although the card could run for some time at an impressive 784 / 2194 / 1991 (core / memory / shader clock) setting, it was not stable at this speed. It wasn't until we went down to 760 / 2168 / 1912 that the card was able to complete a hour of intensive GPU activity without crashing.
With the 9600GT Sonic already being overclocked, these are pretty solid overclocking gains. With the default reference 9600GT's clocks being 650 / 1800 / 1625, running our Palit 9600GT Sonic at 760 / 2168 / 1912 rock steady was enough to put a big grin on our faces. Another thing to be happy about was that the 9600GT Sonic's fan is a fairly quiet -- even running at 100% power it wasn't incredibly loud.
Box
The Palit GeForce 9600GT Sonic is hard to miss on the store shelves: it comes in a reflective, bright green box. The same cyber-frog that adorns the card itself is on the box with a sombre expression. I believe his name is 'Frobot.'
The back of the box is lists a few specifications about the product, in 12 different languages, reflecting Palit's international nature.
Bundle
The Palit GeForce 9600GT Sonic comes with a DVI/VGA adapter, a molex-to-PCIe power adapter, a S/PDIF connector cable, and a driver CD. The driver CD could have been a little bit better executed -- there is no 'easy install' option to get the VDOTool (overclocking) tool going, and additionally, the user manual on the CD is quite sparse; not to mention woefully in need of an update, as it references DirectX 8.1, and appears to have been written before the release of Vista.
On the positive side of things, the 9600GT Sonic comes with a program called muveeNow, which can be used to assemble your home photos and video into movies, and additionally the package includes the Anniversary edition of Tomb Raider. While this is not the greatest game of recent years, it is nonetheless welcome to see, and rounds out the bundle nicely.
Benchmark Setup
For this we review, we used the following testing platform:
We selected a large number of video cards to bench in comparison to our first 9600GT. These cards include, in no particular order:
Additionally, we also tested a 8800 GT SLI configuration (a NVIDIA 8800 GT with a BFG 8800 GT OC), as well as a pair of Palit 9600GT's running in SLI.
This large sample of video cards should give us some excellent indications of were the new 9600GT sits in relation to the rest of the pack.
We use a fully-patched Microsoft Windows Vista to test out our cards. As for drivers, the NVIDIA cards all used Forceware 169.28, except for the 9600GT which used Forceware 174.12 Beta drivers, while the ATI cards were tested with Catalyst 8.2 drivers.
And these are the games we benched, with some information on our chosen settings:
Bioshock:
For this benchmark, all of the Detail settings were set to 'High'. All of the graphic option switches were set to 'On', with the exception of the following three settings: Vsync, Windowed mode, and Force Global Lighting.
We used FRAPS to measure frame rate performance. The FRAPS run was 138 seconds, triggered from pulling the switch in the sub at game's beginning. The sub's dive involves many big models moving around, which should strain the GPU's and be a good measure of the game's engine.
Call of Juarez:
We used the stand-alone Call of Juarez DX10 benchmarking program for these results.
For our AA testing, we used a setting of 2x.
Crysis:
These benchmarks were performed using 'fly-by' GPU test found within the single-player pre-release demo version of the game. All graphic settings were on High.' For AA, we used a setting of 4x. DX10 mode was used. The game has also been fully patched (1.1).
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars:
We use this id FPS benchmark to test out a bit higher resolutions (1280x1024,1600x1200). The following settings were used: medium texture qualities, normal lighting quality, high shader effects, high terrain and foliage quality, ultra shader level, and shadows were on.
Unreal Tournament 3:
We tested the game using a fly-through of the vehicle capture-the-flag map 'Suspense.'ShangriLa (map) running for 90 seconds. Details were set to 'High', and a AF setting of 4x was used.
World In Conflict:
We used the built-in benchmark of the demo version of this game. We ran the benchmark in DX9 rendering mode, with a 'High' level of quality. For the AA testing, we used a setting of 4x, and a setting of 16x for AF.
If you would like any further information about our benchmark settings, feel free to ask us in the forums.
The Palit 9600GT Sonic turned in some good numbers on the 3DMark06 particles test, but not as good numbers in the others.
The Palit 9600GT Sonic doesn't get off to a great start here, with Unreal Tournament 3. The 9600GT gets beaten by its would-be competitors, particularly the HD 3870 and HD 3850.
This could be an aberration though -- let's check out some more games.
The Palit 9600GT Sonic does much better here, in comparison to the last benchmark. Especially at 1920x1200 with AA and AF on, the 9600GT Sonic keeps up with the more expensive 8800 GT, and speeds past the HD 3870 and HD 3850.
Call of Juarez typically performs better on ATI cards, so the Palit 9600GT Sonic has a particularly nice showing here, coming in near the top of the chart. It performs very similarly to a 8800GT, which is a very good thing indeed.
The SLI'd Sonics get a new record for Call of Juarez: both at 1600x1200, with AA on, and at the lowest resolution (1024x768) with AA off. Not bad.
The Palit 9600GT Sonic performs so-so here -- but while its position is low on the Bioshock chart, it stacks up fairly well against the competition, including the more expensive HD 3870.
With AA disabled, the Palit 9600GT Sonic keeps up with the pack in World In Conflict, but doesn't shine. However, when AA is engaged, the card does quite well, keeping within a hair of the NVIDIA 8800 GT 512MB and Asus EN8800 GTX, and out-pacing the VisionTek HD 3870.
Crysis is the current ultimate test of a GPU, and here the Palit 9600GT Sonic puts in a pretty good showing. It shows a reasonable performance advantage over the HD 3870 and HD 3850, though lags about 5 FPS behind the 8800GT 512MB.
Conclusion
Its a good time to be a PC gamer with $200 bucks burning a hole in your pocket.
It has been a long time since their has been so many viable options for mid-range cards. One thing is clear: the 9600GT is far superior to the 8600GTS, and has both the performance and price of a winner at around the $200 USD mark. While the last-generation mid-range cards were handicapped by a 128 bit memory interface, the 9600GT is a very capable card, with enough power to satisfy the demands of most gamers, at common resolutions.
Against the 8800GT, Palit's 9600GT Sonic stacks up pretty well. In many games, the 9600GT was just marginally behind our 8800GT. In that contest, there really isn't a clear winner: both cards offer good performance for their price. It just depends on what you are after, and how much you want to spend to get it.
When compared to the ATI options -- both the HD3850 and HD3870 -- things get interesting. When I started this review, the 9600GT would easily be the better deal. But things change quickly! Although ATI is not releasing any new cards to compete with the 9600GT over the next little while, they did do something to throw a monkey wrench at NVIDIA's new ninth generation card -- they dropped the price of the HD 3870 by a whopping $55, and the price of the HD 3850 by $30. After you factor in these prices cuts, the HD 3870 stands up well against the 9600GT.
If you are looking to upgrade, now might be a good time to do it, but you will not have any easy choice to make. There is no clear winner, or easy choice between NVIDIA or ATI options. It'll come down to the particular card you are staring at on your local hardware shop's shelf (or maybe online.)
If a Palit GeForce 9600GT Sonic was on the shelf in front of me, I'd be inclined to go for it. While it is so far the only 9600GT I've had the chance to test, by all appearances, Palit seemed to have done a top-drawer job on it: the overclock is pretty good, the 3 phase power is a nice bonus, and you get all those lovely ports, which some people will find very handy indeed. Additionally, Palit offers a 3 year warranty, which is always reassuring to have. For the $30 dollars (or so) above the MSRP of a 'vanilla' 9600GT, the Palit 9600GT Sonic seems a solid choice, and is recommended.
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