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Gigabyte GeForce 9600 GT Review
[Abstract]
A Force for EfficiencyWith the introduction of the GeForce 8 series, NVIDIA did away with the separation of 2D and 3D clock speeds for its desktop graphics. Previously, the clock speeds on an ...
[Content] PCDigitalMobileGame
A Force for Efficiency
With the introduction of the GeForce 8 series, NVIDIA did away with the separation of 2D and 3D clock speeds for its desktop graphics. Previously, the clock speeds on an NVIDIA board were lowered when running a less intensive 2D application. When a 3D application was launched, the proper clock speeds were restored. This was an energy saving method that was discarded by NVIDIA due to the lower TDP requirements of the newer generation of cards and the fact that Windows Vista's Aero UI would be constantly taxing the graphics card anyway.
ATI however did not take the same approach. Instead, the company has aggressively played the energy efficient card, which culminated in the appearance of ATI's PowerPlay feature (previously on its mobile GPUs only) on its latest Radeon HD 3800 series. This feature allows for lower clocks on those compliant ATI graphics cards and in our experience, significantly reduced idle power draw compared to its NVIDIA counterparts.
We didn't get the retail package but here's the product image from Gigabyte's website. |
So what's one to do if one desires the former 2D/3D clock separation of yesterday on a new NVIDIA card? One could either force that separation via third party utilities like RivaTuner or enjoy it out of the box from the vendor. The latter is in our hands today in the form of the Gigabyte Gv-NX96T512HP. While we knew that this was a Turbo Force edition card with additional features like enhanced performance tuning for maximum stability, we didn't realize about its 2D/3D clock separation till we plugged the card in. Before we go into all that, here are the technical specifications:
Gigabyte GV-NX96T512HP Technical Specifications
| GraphicsEngine | - NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GTGPU (G94)
- 505 million transistors
- 3D GPUclock = 720MHz
- 64 Stream Processors at 1800MHz
- NVIDIA Unified Architecture
- GigaThread technology
- Full support for Microsoft DirectX 10
- Geometry shaders
- Geometry instancing
- Streamed output
- Shader Model 4.0
- Full 128-bit floating point precision through theentire rendering pipeline
- NVIDIA Lumenex Technology
- 16x full screen anti-aliasing
- Transparent multisampling and transparentsupersampling
- 16x angle independent anisotropic filtering
- 128-bit floating point high dynamic-range (HDR)lightingwith anti-aliasing
- 32-bit per component floating point texturefilteringand blending
- Advanced lossless compression algorithms for color,texture, and z-data
- Support for normal map compression
- Z-cull
- Early-Z
- NVIDIA Quantum Effects Technology
- Advanced shader processors architected for physicscomputation
- Simulate and render physics effects on the graphicsprocessor
- NVIDIA SLI Technology
- NVIDIA PureVideo HDTechnology
- Dedicated on-chip video processor (VP2)
- High-definition H.264, VC-1, MPEG2 and WMV9decodeacceleration
- Advanced spatial-temporal de-interlacing
- HDCP capable
- Spatial-Temporal De-Interlacing
- Noise Reduction
- Edge Enhancement
- Bad Edit Correction
- Inverse telecine (2:2 and 3:2 pull-downcorrection)
- High-quality scaling
- Video color correction
- Microsoft Video Mixing Renderer (VMR) support
- Advanced Display Functionality
- Two dual-link DVI outputs for digital flat paneldisplayresolutions up to 2560x1600
- Dual integrated 400MHz RAMDACs for analog displayresolutions up to and including 2048x1536 at 85Hz
- Integrated HDTV encoder provides analog TV-output(Component/Composite/S-Video) up to 1080i resolution
- NVIDIA nView multi-display technology capability
- 10-bit display processing
- Built for Windows Vista
- Full DirectX 10 support
- Dedicated graphics processor powers the new WindowsVistaAero 3D user interface
- VMR-based video architecture
- Designed for PCIExpress 2.0
- Designed for high-speed GDDR3 memory
- Advanced thermalmonitoring and thermal management
| | GraphicsMemory | - 256-bit memoryinterface
- 512MB Graphics DDR3SDRAM
- Default clock rate of 1008MHz (effective speed of2016MHzDDR)
| | DisplayCapabilities | - Dual 400MHz RAMDACsthat support resolutions of2048x1536@85Hz
- Dual-link DVIcapability to drive displays of up to2560x1600
| | Connectors | - 1 x mini-DIN connector(for Video-out)
- 2 x DVI-I connector(HDCP Ready)
| | Drivers& Software | - Driver support forMicrosoft Windows Vista/9x/ME/2000/XP/XPMCE/XP Pro x64, Linux and Macintosh OS (including OS X)
| | OtherInformation | - PCI Express x16 2.0 compliant
- Dedicated 6-pin PCIeMolex power connector required (notshared or split)
- Power supply rated for400W or higher recommended byNVIDIA
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