In our opinion, the new chip is definitely a success. It's an excellent product. But let's not put the cart before the horse. Much time has passed since the launch of mid-end NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS. Unlike the top solution, it had very few ALU's and TMU's, 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. 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. This version should narrow the current gap between the high-end and mid-range segment. - Digit-Life

NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT (G94) Video Board Preview

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 ALU's and TMU's. The new GPU's feature improved units and a 65nm fabrication process, which allowed to reduce the costs and launch such powerful solutions in the mid-end segment. Its shader frequencies are also a tad higher, and the video memory bandwidth has also grown almost twofold. That's the effect of the 256-bit bus, which appeared as a first in this segment.

So as a result, the new GeForce 9600 GT is almost twice as powerful in all parameters, namely execution speed of shaders, texture lookups, plus the increased fill rate and memory bandwidth. It's also important that the card comes with 512MB of on-board video memory instead of 256MB. The latter size is too small. According to our research, it's apparently insufficient for modern games. That may be the reason why NVIDIA decided to manufacture 512MB cards. The golden mean for modern games, which have high requirements to video memory size and use approximately up to 512MB, which is becoming a standard.

Well, what can we say? The Radeon HD 3850 and even the Radeon HD 3870 cards are defeated. The latter card was designed to compete with the GeForce 8800 GT, can you believe it? AMD will have to bring down prices, to synchronize them with performance of their cards. Unfortunately, AMD has recently launched many new cards in the mid-end and budget segments, doing little in higher segments. However, the Radeon HD 3870 cards cannot compete in the $200-250 range, and the Radeon HD 3870 X2 is just too expensive. That's the second time that we are pleasantly surprised at how good a product is for its price segment.

Prices for these cards will be initially raised too high, of course. The GeForce 9600 GT will certainly cost like the Radeon HD 3870 or it will be a tad cheaper. However, the target segment of the GeForce 9600GT is below $200. So the prices may come down by summer. There is a huge performance gap between the GeForce 9600 GT and the previous GeForce 8600 GTS, and our benchmark results show it. But the price gap won't be too large. Apparently, the GeForce 9600 GT will be followed by the GeForce 9600 GS series which should come in at around $130-140 while the GeForce 8600 GTS will be pushed down to $100.

Besides, you should pay attention to the abundance of overclocked GeForce 9600 GT cards. We think that each vendor will offer several modifications. So their performance level will be closer to the GeForce 8800 GT. The GeForce 8800 GT was even outperformed by the fastest GeForce 9600 GT cards in a number of cases. NVIDIA has brought heavy artillery, launching a graphics card with a 256-bit interface and a powerful core in the $170 segment.