Nvidia created some serious waves with the GeForce 8800 GTX when they released it back in November of 2006. Unfortunately for gamers that could not afford a model from the luxurious GeForce 8800 series, a more affordable solution did not arrive for another 5 months, and when it did we quickly learnt what it meant to be truly disappointed. Upon receiving our GeForce 8600 GT sample we decided to compare it to the previous 7600 GT model.

Amazingly the new GeForce 8600 GT was actually found to be slightly slower than the 7600 GT in a number of the older games that we tested using early drivers. Updated drivers improved the performance quite significantly, though in a number of games we still found the 1600x1200 performance unacceptable. Even today, as we revisit the GeForce 8600 GTS, the performance is still very average, as we received less than 40fps on average in F.E.A.R, Prey, World in Conflict, Crysis, Company of Heroes and Supreme Commander at 1680x1050.

However the 8600 series now fairs much better when compared to the GeForce 7600 GT and in fact can outperform the GeForce 7900 GS in a number of the more recent games. Still, the Radeon HD 3850 has completely eliminated the GeForce 8600 series, offering significantly better performance at a similar price range. So while Nvidia completely cocked up their last generation mid-range line up, they now have the chance to redeem themselves with the new GeForce 9600 GT.

The GeForce 9600 GT looks quite impressive on paper, featuring a 650MHz core clock speed, 1.8GHz GDDR3 memory and a 256-bit wide memory bus resulting in a memory bandwidth of 57.6GB/s, which is the exact same figure produced by the 8800 GT. However where the 9600 GT looses out when compared to the 8800 GT, is in its core configuration.

While the 8800 GT core consists of 112 SPUs (Stream Processor Units), 56 TAUs (Texture Address Units) and 16 ROPs (Rasterization Operator Units), the 9600 GT features 64 SPUs, 32 TAUs and 16 ROPs. So with 43% fewer SPUs and TAUs it will be interesting to see how this $169-189 US mid-range graphics card compares to the 8800 GT which currently costs roughly $230 US. Of course the 9600 GT is not designed to compete with the 8800 GT. Rather the 9600 GT will have the Radeon HD 3850 and 3870 in its crosshair.