Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT Merrill WI

As Nvidia appears to have a bad case of 'name diarrhoea' right now, and is conjuring up new names for old cards almost daily, we aren't sure how long the 9600 GSO will be around. To add to the pain of understanding what to buy, its specs are completely mixed up, with some that are superior to those of the more expensive 9600 GT, while others are inferior.







Whereas the 9600 GT has 64 stream processors running at 1.625GHz, the 9600 GSO has 96, although they run at a slower 1.375GHz. To confuse matters further, the 9600 GT has a superior memory subsystem, and is able to talk to its 512MB of GDDR3 running at 900MHz (1.8GHz effective) via a 256-bit memory controller. In contrast, the 9600 GSO's 384MB of GDDR3 runs at 800MHz (1.6GHz effective) and communicates with the GPU via a 192-bit memory controller.







This eclectic mixture of specifications makes it very hard to predict the performance of the two 9600 GPUs. For example, while the 9600 GSO was swamped by Crysis Warhead, the 9600 GT was much faster, although the game still wasn't playable. At the same time, although both models coped admirably with X3: Terran Conflict and Fallout 3, neither could play Far Cry 2 smoothly.







The 9600 GSO is practically neck and neck with the similarly priced HD 4670 for gaming performance. However, while the latter is currently limited to gaming, the 9600 GSO, thanks to CUDA, is capable of many more types of application. For example, the 9600 GSO is a speed demon when it comes to Folding@home, producing an incredible 4,508ppd for very little power consumption. In contrast, thanks to its lower number of stream processors, the 9600 GT produces just 3,427ppd. As such, if you want to use your PC for more than gaming, or you plan to build a folding farm with multiple graphics cards, the 9600 GSO should be at the top of your shopping list.

Author: James Gorbold & Mark Mackay

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