Gainward BLISS 9600GSO 768 Mb: does much video memory make much sense?
Overclocking, benchmarking, and final words
The purpose of today's review is in the investigation of advantage gained from the greater amount of onboard video memory as compared to the "regular" GeForce 9600GSO. While in the previous cases we came up against the issue of video memory shortage in quality modes, this time the issue should pass by at least in most tests. We'll be trying to make up for the reduced number of functional units in the G92 GPU as compared to that in GeForce 8800GT, 8800GTS 512, and 9800GTX, as well as the narrower memory bus, through overclocking. From the nominal frequencies 600/1512/1800 MHz, Gainward BLISS 9600GSO 768 MB was overclocked to 756/1890/1800 MHz at which we'll be testing it. This is the test-bench configuration:
| Test configuration |
| CPU |
Intel Core 2 Quad X6850 3.0 GHz |
| Motherboard |
ASUS P5E3 (Intel X38) |
| RAM |
Corsair Dominator DDR3 2 x 2 GB 1333 MHz 6-6-6-18 1T |
| Operating system |
Windows XP+SP2+DirectX 9.0c / Windows Vista for DX10 tests |
| Power supply unit |
Thermaltake Toughpower 750 W |
The rivals to the new product by Gainward will be GeForce 8800GT, Radeon HD4850, GeForce 9800GTX, and GeForce 8800 Ultra. The more powerful and expensive video cards have been take to see if an inexpensive video card with greater video memory capacity and overclocking capability will be able competing against them?
For tests, we used drivers of the following versions:
- ForceWare 175.39 for GeForce video cards;
- Catalyst 8.6 - for Radeon HD4850;
- We start introduction to the results with 3DMark test suites;
At 3DMark 05, the new product took the last but one place, which ranks pretty well versus the more powerful contenders. However, in 3DMark 06 which is more demanding to the shader computations, the new product by Gainward took the last place. The number of shader units in the GPU reduced to 96 made itself felt.
We'll be running all the further tests in high resolutions and quality modes with the 4x FSAA and 16x AF enabled.
At Crysis under Windows XP, Gainward BLISS 9600GSO 768 MB showed better results in two resolutions of three than those for GeForce 9800GTX and GeForce 8800GT. That was the result of the insufficiency of the 512 MB video memory for these two video cards.
At Crysis under Windows Vista, Gainward BLISS 9600GSO 768 MB was able to pass the test in 2048x1536, which was impossible for GeForce 9800GTX, nor for GeForce 8800GT. It's a pity that the speed was too low in doing that.
At Call of Juarez under Windows XP, no issues with shortage for video memory were found, however, the 768 MB of video memory on board Gainward BLISS 9600GSO 768 MB proved to be useful, because the "standard" capacity of 384 MB might not be sufficient for it.
At Call of Juarez under Windows Vista, nor issues with shortage of the video memory were found. Gainward BLISS 9600GSO 768 MB again demonstrates not the best result because of the weakened GPU and reduced bit-rate of the memory bus. But to be fair, we've got to admit that other participants of the tests were not performing in their best way.
At Call of Duty 4, the new card by Gainward showed worse results, and the 768 MB of video memory proved to be undemanded, as can be seen from the results for GeForce 9800GTX and GeForce 8800GT which use 512 MB of video memory.
At Race Driver: GRID in 2048x1536, Gainward BLISS 9600GSO 768 MB demonstrated results close to those for GeForce 9800GTX and even left GeForce 8800GT behind. The 768 MB video memory of the new product did its good job but because of the cut-down GPU and the reduced memory bus it took the last place. But we should note that all the three mentioned video cards showed unacceptably low speed at this resolution.
Final Words
Gainward BLISS 9600GSO 768 MB is attractive for its video memory capacity increased to 768 MB and the minor increase in price as compared to the "regular" GeForce 9600GSO, but as our today's tests have shown, that does not make much sense. Needless to say, as compared to the "regular" GeForce 9600GSO equipped with merely 384 MB of video memory the new product by Gainward with 768 MB of video memory looks more preferable. But in the demanding modes where such a high video memory capacity is in need the new product performs lower because of the weaker GPU and its narrower memory bus width. We should either have to reduce the resolution or disable the FSAA, and then the 512 MB of video memory may prove sufficient. We bring in a table with prices for some video cards, including Gainward BLISS 9600GSO 768 MB, according to price.ru:
| Video card |
Price, rubles (1 USD = 23.5 rubles) |
| Gainward BLISS 9600GSO 768 Mb |
3770 |
| GeForce 9800GTX 512 MB |
7500 |
| Radeon HD4850 |
5500 |
| GeForce 8800GT 512 MB |
4200 |
Evidently, GeForce 8800GT looks more preferable than Gainward BLISS 9600GSO 768MB: with the price difference by merely $17, it offers a full-featured 256-bit memory bus versus 192-bit in Gainward BLISS 9600GSO 768 MB and greater number of functional units in the GPU. The 512 MB of video memory is quite enough for it in most gaming modes where the video card is able demonstrating an acceptable speed.
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