Readers might be wondering why the performance of the GeForce 9600 GT was compared against the GeForce 7900 GS. When we reviewed the GeForce 8600 GTS back in April of 2007, its performance was compared to the GeForce 7900 GS, which debuted in late 2006. In that review, we found that the GeForce 7900 GS was a strong competitor due to its 256-bit memory interface.
Specs Comparison
Although the GeForce 8600 GTS was designed with the unified shader architecture of the GeForce 8 Series and had much higher core and memory clock speeds than the GeForce 7900 GS, its 128-bit memory interface hampered performance at higher resolutions and when 4x antialiasing was used.
Given the fact that the GeForce 7900 GS only had 256MB of memory, the resolution for the following tests was kept at 1680x1050 to ensure that graphics memory would be readily available for the applications tested.
Performance at 1680x1050
In hindsight, mainstream gamers would have been delighted had the GeForce 8600 GTS delivered performance similar to the GeForce 9600 GT. NVIDIA was in a position to actually make that happen, but such a part would have come too close in performance to the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB.
Performance at 1680x1050
Should you own a mid-range GeForce 7 Series graphics card and a reasonably fast processor and chose to bypass the GeForce 8 Series entirely, the GeForce 9600 GT should be looking quite attractive at this point.
