Gainward BLISS 9600GSO 768 Mb: does much video memory make much sense?

Our recent tests have shown that many modern video cards may lack the video memory capacity. Once the video card's own memory capacity turns insufficient, the system starts using up part of the RAM. The idea is fine, but in practice this frequently results in performance drop, and sometimes a failure in the video card operation. This is especially painful for GeForce video cards which show greater performance drop with the video memory capacity being equal with that for Radeon video cards. That is why today our attention has been drawn by Gainward BLISS 9600GSO 768 MB that offers twice times as much of video memory capacity than that for the "regular" GeForce 9600GSO 384 MB. Our research has shown that 384 MB of video memory may prove insufficient for playing games in quality modes. For the time that has passed, new video cards have appeared on the market, and prices for old video cards, including GeForce 9600GSO, have gone down. It is interesting to find out if an inexpensive video card of the 9600GSO class of greater video memory capacity and overclocking capability is able competing against more powerful and expensive video cards. That will be the subject of our today's review.

Gainward BLISS 9600GSO 768 MB is packaged in a standard box . There are differences, albeit minor.

The package bundle of the video card includes:

• power supply adapter for PCI-Express video cards;
• DVI -> D-Sub adapter;
• S-Video -> RCA adapter (S/P-DIF sound input);
• S-Video > Component out adapter;
• CD with drivers and a user's manual.
• CD with software for DVD;
• user's guide;

Even without removing the cooling system, it is easy to see that Gainward BLISS 9600GSO 768 MB is made following the same PCB design as the more expensive Gainward BLISS 8800GTS 1024 MB (). Externally, the video cards differ in only the size of cooling plates installed on the reverse side of the PCB.

The cooling system is made up of three parts: the first one cools the GPU chip, the other two - the memory chips.

The PCB design provides placement of 16 memory chips, and merely 12 of them are installed. The bus bit rate of the memory bus was cut down to 192-bit, therefore, the amount of onboard video memory has been reduced to 768 MB.

The memory chips are made by Qimonda and offer 1.0 ns access time, which is equivalent to the effective frequency 2000 MHz.

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:

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:

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.