The specs

As we stated earlier, the GeForce 9600 GT consists of roughly 505 million transistors, over 200 million less than G92. So where did all the transistors go? From the stream processors. Whereas the G92 GPU boasts up to 128 stream processors, G94 has half that number, consisting of just 64 stream processors.

65-nm manufacturing process

Like G92, the G94 GPU used in the GeForce 9600 GT is built on TSMC’s 65-nm manufacturing process. The smaller process allows NVIDIA to cram more transistors into G94 without severely increasing the size of the GPU’s die. With a smaller die size, NVIDIA yields more chips per silicon wafer and thus the G94 GPU is cheaper for NVIDIA to produce. This reduced manufacturing cost allows NVIDIA to price the 9600 GT for less than $200 without negatively affecting their overall margins. With the debut of the GeForce 9600 GT, production of the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB and 8800 GS should cease as these cards are essentially more expensive for NVIDIA to produce.

According to NVIDIA, design and process improvements allow them to clock the stream processors at 1625MHz. That’s 275MHz higher than the GeForce 8800 GTX’s shaders and even 125MHz higher than GeForce 8800 GT. Our guess is that the reduced number of transistors also helped play a role in the higher speeds as the chip obviously draws less power and thus generates less heat. NVIDIA states that the max board power for the 9600 GT is 95W, 10W less than the GeForce 8800 GT and the same figure as AMD’s Radeon HD 3850.

Also like G92, NVIDIA has doubled the number of texture address units per texture processing cluster from four to eight. This gives G94 a peak texture filtering rate of 32GTexels/sec. In comparison, the GeForce 8800 GTS can filter just 24GTexels/sec peak. G94 also incorporates the same enhanced color and z-compression found in G92.

The following chart summarizes the key features found in today’s latest mainstream cards:

Mainstream Graphics Comparison Table
	GeForce 8800 GT	GeForce 8600 GTS	GeForce 9600 GT	Radeon HD 3870	Radeon HD 3850
Manufacturing Process	65-nm	80-nm	65-nm	55-nm	55-nm
# of Transistors	754M	289M	505M	666M	666M
Graphics Core Clock	600MHz	675MHz	650MHz	777MHz	670MHz
Shader Clock (Stream Processors)	1500MHz	1450MHz	1625MHz	777MHz	670MHz
# of Stream Processors	112	32	64	320	320
Memory Clock Speed	900MHz (1.8GHz effective)	1.0GHz (2.0GHz effective)	900MHz (1.8GHz effective)	1125MHz (2.25GHz effective)	900MHz (1.8GHz effective)
Memory Interface	256-bit	128-bit	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit
Memory Bandwidth (GB/s)	57.6GB/sec	32GB/sec	57.6GB/sec	72GB/sec	57.6GB/sec
Memory Size	512MB	256MB/512MB/1GB	512MB	512MB	256MB/512MB
# of ROPs	16	8	16	16	16
PCI Express Interface	PCIe 2.0	PCIe 1.1	PCIe 2.0	PCIe 2.0	PCIe 2.0

Notes

Not mentioned in the chart above is the GeForce 9600 GT’s estimated MSRP: $189. The card essentially replaces the GeForce 8600 GTS, which will now do battle at the $150 and under mark. We should also note that G94 offers the same improved video introduced with G92 and the chip also supports HDMI as well as DisplayPort. NVIDIA’s board partners have the option of including HDMI or DisplayPort natively on the back plane of the card, or including HDMI support via an adapter. In fact, one of the 9600 GT cards we’re looking at today supports all three display options!