Going head to head with AMD's ATI Radeon HD 3830
NVIDIA has, as expected, rolled out its GeForce 9600 GSO GPU, putting it firmly up against AMD's imminent Radeon HD 3830.
NVIDIA states that the latest addition to its GeForce 9 Series of GPUs "offers a powerfully immersive entertainment experience designed for extreme high-definition gaming and video playback".
As expected, all of NVIDIA's usual partners are lining up to present their 9600 GSO-based boards, and for our illustration, here's the MSI offering:
The stock 9600 GSO specification, as provided by NVIDIA, is as follows:
| GeForce 9600 GSO | |
| Processor Cores | 96 |
| Core Clock (MHz) | 550 MHz |
| Shader Clock (MHz) | 1375 MHz |
| Memory Clock (MHz) | 800 MHz |
| Memory Amount | 384MiB |
| Memory Interface | 192-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec) | 38.4 |
| Texture Fill Rate (billion/sec) | 26.4 |
As is always the case, you should expect NVIDIA's partners to crank those numbers up a notch. EVGA, for example, has already announced its 'Superclocked' GeForce 9600 GSO, which offers a core clock of 650MHz and a shader clock of 1620MHz.
AMD's still unreleased Radeon HD 3830 and NVIDIA's new 9600 GSO are both expected to launch at a price cheaper than NVIDIA's current GeForce 9600 GT. Though no official pricing has been announced just yet, expect GeForce 9600 GSO parts to start filtering through to retail immediately, with widespread availability next month.
Official product page: NVIDIA.com
