This GPU was, in its time, desired by all gamers that were on tight budget. Advanced features that G92 brought seamed as good foundation because it was, actually, G80 chip made in 65nm manufacturing process with more Texturing Units but with 8 ROP units less. Surface of chip was halved so cooling solution can be single-slot type without too much overheating of the entire graphics card. Problem emerged when nVIDIA passed on to Series 9 with GPU that wasn’t improved in any way. The market was saturated with already well established product, while competition in the meantime was very active. G92 specifications are well known: it is built in 65nm manufacturing process and it has 128 Stream Processors (but none of models in this test had “full” chip: GeForce 8800GTS 512 MB and 9800GTX). In defined price range we also managed to squeeze in 9800GT and 8800GT (that have 112 Stream Processors) and 9600GSO with its 96 Stream Processors. Beside all that every G92 has 64 Texturing Units and 16 ROP units. Thanks to slightly better specifications G92 has higher frequencies thanks to new manufacturing process. On paper G92 was much better than its predecessor but nVIDIA decided to level out that advantage by limiting G92’s memory bus to 256 bits while old GeForce 8800GTX and GTS had 384 bit and 320 bit memory bus. Good overclockability of these graphics cards is one of their virtues but, as far as we know, more than 720 MHz for GPU can be hardly achieved.

This model was presented few months ago and its purpose was to replace 8800GT. This would be nice news if new model wasn’t identical to mentioned 8800GT. Even nVIDIA stated that 80% of 9800GT is the same as 8800GT. New features are: support for triple SLI and Hybrid power. Those 20% differences can be ignored because for this class of product, where every frame counts, additional features are less important. GPU in GeForce 9800GT has 112 SPs, 56 TUs and 16 ROPs. Memory can be found in amount of 512 MB and 1 GB in form of DDR3 chips with 1.1 ns response time. nVIDIA default frequency values for GPU is 600 MHz (identical as for 8800GT), 1500 MHz for Stream Processors and 1800 MHz for memory. All these values are identical to values for 8800GT so differences in test results will be minor. Gainward was provider of 9800GT that we got in this test. As it is always the case with models from this manufacturer, PCB referent design was changed along with used cooling solution. Cooling solution was quiet and performances were on expected levels.

This is the same card as above mentioned minus support for triple SLI and Hybrid power. This card should be purchased only if its price is lower than price for 9800GT. If you wish, you can even replace original BIOS of 8800GT for one from 9800GT.

… or 8800GS if you prefer. This model was supposed to keep a place for GeForce 9600GT but its occurrences were frequent as occurrences of snow in desert of Sahara. Latter this card reincarnated as 9600GSO when nVIDIA was in full swing with its strategy to confuse its competitor and users. Nevertheless 9600GSO is very fast graphics card especially if we take into account the fact that this card has 192bit memory bus and that it works at low frequencies (550 MHz for GPU, 1375 MHz for Stream Processors and 1600 MHZ for DDR3 memory). G92 that can be found on this card is weakened a lot: 96 Stream Processors and 12 ROP units.  Amount of memory that can be usually found on this model is 384 MB but there are models with 1.5 GB. This model can be overcloked nicely because of low starting values, and we had best experience with Palit SONIC model.