NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3

The Expanding GeForce 9 Family

For all the noise NVIDIA had made recently about streamlining its product lineup, it seems that such a day has not arrived yet. Because the company has announced the availability of three new GeForce 9 GPUs, two higher end GeForce 9800 models and a new mainstream part, the GeForce 9500 GT. Together with the newly introduced GeForce 9 mobile GPUs, it means that the GeForce 9 family has probably doubled in the past weeks and not necessarily for the better (don't get us started on the confusing nomenclature NVIDIA uses for its GeForce 9 mobile GPUs)

Of course, not all of this is news to enthusiasts. The GeForce 9800 GTX+ has been available for some time now in retail to combat the competition posed by ATI's Radeon HD 4850 against the now obsolete 9800 GTX. It uses a die shrunk G92 core of the 55nm process technology with slightly higher clock speeds. Meanwhile, the other new member of the GeForce 9800 series, the 9800 GT is a rebadged 8800 GT, with NVIDIA throwing in HybridPower support to align it with the rest of the GeForce 9800 series. Hence, the most interesting of the three 'new' GeForce 9 GPUs is the GeForce 9500 GT and we'll be looking closely at its performance today.

As its numerical name suggests (NVIDIA's nomenclature is not completely illogical yet), the GeForce 9500 GT is a notch less capable than NVIDIA's current performance mainstream GPU, the 9600 GT. Technology is often evolutionary however, thus the new kid has more in common with NVIDIA's older GeForce 8600 series, with a similar internal configuration of stream processors, ROPs and texture filtering units. The clock speeds are not exactly the same and there are naturally some enhancements within the G96 core which result in a greater transistor count than the GeForce 8600 GPUs. GeForce 9-only features like Hybrid SLI, PhysX, CUDA and the latest PureVideo HD engine will also be present on the 9500 GT.

While these new GPUs will be manufactured eventually using a 55nm process, initial batches are built on 65nm. NVIDIA has prepped a couple of variants for its board partners to market and customize, with the use of GDDR2 or GDDR3 memory the main difference, along with some minor memory clock variations. These GPUs will also fall into the same price segment (US$100 and below) as the older GeForce 8600 cards and are therefore the designated successors. Below, we have the specifications of the new GPU and some of its expected competitors.

Zotac's Overclocked GeForce 9500 GT

We received an overclocked AMP! edition of the GeForce 9500 GT from Zotac and a reference model from MSI that turned out to be a pre-production version. Hence, we will only be looking at the Zotac for this review, though we have tested and included the scores of the MSI reference board in our results.

The Zotac board comes with a 650MHz core clock, a significant 100MHz increase over the reference 550MHz. Like we mentioned, there will be GDDR2 and GDDR3 variants of the 128-bit GeForce 9500 GT and both our boards happened to be the GDDR3 version, with 512MB of 1.0ns memory from Samsung and clocked at 1800MHz DDR for the overclocked Zotac. The reference MSI board ran at 1600MHz DDR. The stream processor clock is at 1400MHz for the reference, but obviously this was also increased, to 1625MHz on the Zotac.

The PCB for both GeForce 9500 GT were similarly much shorter than its higher end counterparts. While neither of them are low profile enough to fit into smaller chassis for home theater PCs and such, there should be such cards in the near future. After all, passively cooled GeForce 9500 GT cards are already upcoming from some manufacturers. The fan itself is relatively quiet, which is not surprising since this card does not require excessive cooling. The TDP rating is a modest 50W and a 350W power supply is the bare requirement for this mainstream GPU.

Inside the modest packaging of the Zotac AMP! card, we found the following contents:

• Driver CD
• User manual
• DVI-to-VGA adapter
• DVI-to-HDMI adapter
• S-Video extension cable
• S/PDIF cable
• 9-pin mini-DIN to S-Video/Composite cable

Test Setup

For this mainstream GPU, we relied on our trusty Windows XP system, which had been patched to Service Pack 2. The hardware was made up of an Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 (2.66GHz) and an Intel D975XBX motherboard. 2GB of low latency HyperX DDR2-800 memory from Kingston was installed in dual channel mode, along with a Seagate 7200.7 SATA hard drive.

The GeForce 9500 GT is aimed at the sub US$100 segment and accordingly, we have chosen some of the competitors in this market to line up against the newcomer. Arguably, cards like the GeForce 9600 GT and the Radeon HD 3850 could be viable competitors, since they are now hovering at the hundred dollar mark, so we have included the Radeon HD 3850 too. As for the rest, it includes strictly mainstream fare like the older GeForce 8600 series and ATI's Radeon HD 3650. Frame buffer sizes for these cards vary from 256 to 512MB and with 512MB of GDDR3, the GeForce 9500 GT should have the advantage for this department.

We tested the GeForce 9500 GT and 8600 GTS on the newer ForceWare 177.72. The slower GeForce 8600 GT was on 169.21 drivers. Meanwhile, both the Radeon cards were on Catalyst 8.2, admittedly not the most recent of drivers but the results should not differ that much. The results presented were taken using the included time demos and other built-in benchmarking tools available in the following games:

• Futuremark 3DMark06 (ver 110)
• Company of Heroes (ver 1.3)
• F.E.A.R (ver 1.0)
• World in Conflict (ver 1.05)
• Supreme Commander (patched to 3255)
• Crysis (ver 1.1)
• Unreal Tournament 3 (ver 1.1)

Results - 3DMark06 Pro (ver. 110)

As the GeForce 9 successor to the GeForce 8600 series, the GeForce 9500 GT did not seem like a 'next-generation' product, with scores that were similar to and perhaps even marginally lower than the GeForce 8600 GTS in 3DMark06. Only with anti-aliasing enabled and at 1920 x 1440 did we see the GeForce 9500 GT having a significant lead over the older cards (and that too primarily because of the larger frame buffer). At least the GeForce 9500 GT was clearly faster than the Radeon HD 3650 and the overclocked Zotac managed to perform like what we had expected from a GeForce 9 product.

Results - Company of Heroes & F.E.A.R

Company of Heroes was a much need boost for the GeForce 9500 GT, as our results showed the newcomer leading all its competitors (with the exception of the Radeon HD 3850, which is probably beyond this price segment). While the Zotac was obviously much faster than the competition, the reference MSI card also did well enough to distinguish itself from the other cards.

F.E.A.R however was not as convincing, as the standard GeForce 9500 GT performed similarly to the GeForce 8600 cards and the Radeon HD 3650. Even the overclocked Zotac was only on par with the 3650. While the ATI card faltered with anti-aliasing and dropped out of the reckoning, the GeForce 9500 GT remained unimpressive at those settings.

Results - Supreme Commander & World in Conflict

It was more of the same in Supreme Commander, as the GeForce 9500 GT failed to shake off the GeForce 8600 GTS. Fortunately, it remained ahead of the Radeon HD 3650 and also fared better in the next benchmark, World in Conflict, where it was faster than all of its relevant competitors.

Results - Unreal Tournament 3 & Crysis

Our experience in Unreal Tournament 3 did not alter our impressions of the GeForce 9500 GT. While its performance here was decent, it was on par with the older GeForce 8600 GTS, with the advantage going to the newer card at higher resolutions. Crysis however showed that the GeForce 9500 GT and its 512MB of memory suffered a less drastic drop in frames, especially at higher resolutions and settings. Nevertheless, the absolute frame rates from all the cards here made it quite questionable whether one could actually play the game comfortably at these settings. A notch-down in image quality settings should give more playable frame rates for these lower-range mainstream graphics cards.

Temperature

The core temperatures on our overclocked Zotac was in the 50 - 55 degrees Celsius range, which was slightly higher than the other mainstream cards, albeit this Zotac was running at higher clocks than the reference. With no cooling assistance, the memory chips on the card could also get quite warm, which may hinder overclocking attempts.

Overclocking

Despite our reservations about its temperatures, the Zotac managed a rather decent overclock from its already higher than norm clock speeds. This bagged us a roughly 10% improvement over the default Zotac scores in 3DMark06 and a significant lead over the GeForce 8600 GTS.

Power Consumption

While its performance may not have set any new records, the GeForce 9500 GT did look like a next-gen product when it came to power consumption matters. With a TDP rating of 50W, it was always going to fare better than its predecessors in this department and we found quite an improvement over the GeForce 8600 series. Even when compared to the 55nm Radeon HD 3650, the GeForce 9500 GT had a slight edge. Perhaps we'll see even more of such power savings when the 55nm versions are available in the future.

GeForce 9 - A Case of Marketing?

The saying that it never rains but pours seems rather appropriate for NVIDIA at the moment. Stock prices fell by a massive 31% on news in July that revenue forecasts will be lower for the second half of the year, thanks to increased competition from ATI's new Radeon HD 4800 series and taking in account charges related to its mobile G84/86 GPU failures. This mobile GPU fiasco has since blossomed into a rather serious issue involving large OEMs like HP and Dell and considering the prevalence of these mobile GPUs in the market, one can expect this epidemic to spread even further.

With such a confluence of events, what does NVIDIA do to combat the rising tide of negativity? Well, they continue with its grand marketing plan to rebrand its later GeForce 8 GPUs (the G92s and beyond) with the GeForce 9 name, with minor enhancements (and a die shrink for later batches) and re-release them to the public as new GPUs. Admittedly, this is quite a common practice in this industry, since the R&D costs for a new architecture can be quite a massive investment and chipmakers try to exploit each generation fully. However, the timing of the move is not the most reassuring for jittery investors, especially with the recent drastic price cuts that NVIDIA had to implement to stay competitive against ATI's new GPUs.

While the GeForce 9500 GT does not appear to be a blatant carbon copy of any existing GeForce 8 GPU like how the GeForce 9800 GT is practically a GeForce 8800 GT, it is also not that different from the incumbent GeForce 8600 series. To be fair, the increased transistor count hint at internal core changes but the same architecture and same component count (in terms of stream processors, ROPs, etc) are not too flattering.

This impression was borne out in our performance benchmarks, where the GeForce 9500 GT and the GeForce 8600 GTS were very similar in various resolutions and settings. The 512MB on the GeForce 9500 GT gave it some advantage but not enough at most playable settings that it would be decisive. The only consolation is that ATI's competing Radeon HD 3650 was quite clearly the inferior GPU compared to the newcomer, so NVIDIA still has the edge here. Power consumption too was quite favorable for the GeForce 9500 GT.

In the end, the upgrade of the newcomer over its predecessors if any would be for the new GeForce 9-only features that NVIDIA has introduced. It could be argued that most users would not benefit from them, as technologies like CUDA and PhysX may not be needed or aren't advantageous enough in such mainstream cards. Others like PureVideo HD are more likely to see some action, but the difference between the PureVideo HD on the GeForce 8 and the newer version on the GeForce 9 is again hardly sufficient to tempt us at all. After all, the successful VP2 video engine was first implemented on the GeForce 8600 series and the GeForce 9 series only tweaked them in minor ways such as dual-stream decode acceleration for picture-in-picture (PiP) needs, but how often do you actually require that? It's not that we're expecting more goodness out of the video processing engine, but it has sort of reached maturity to address the most needed concerns and any additional improvements along the way are just nice add-ons, but may not be a real need that most would cherish.

In short, if you already possess a GeForce 8 card of a similar caliber (or even a GeForce 7 of the same range), it's a lateral upgrade at best, not a move up the performance ladder. If you're new to all these and looking for a decent mainstream option, the GeForce 9500 GT could be a good choice at its price range of US$70 - 90 ($90 should bag you an overclocked version like this Zotac AMP! edition). However, we bet that most enthusiasts who are even thinking of playing any modern game on their PCs, would be willing to spend a bit more and get the true performance mainstream GPUs, like a GeForce 9600 GSO, GeForce 9600 GT or a Radeon HD 3850.

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