Nvidia GeForce 9600 GSO review

As technology advances and new cards arrive, older models inevitably look tired - and there's no better example than Nvidia's sorry 9600 GSO. Quite simply, this graphics card should be taken off the shelves and put out of its misery.

It's actually closer to the 9800 cards than the 9600 GT with which it shares a portion of its name. With a measly 550MHz core clock speed and 96 stream processors, along with slower memory - and less of it - than the 9600 GT, it's disadvantaged in the performance stakes.

Yet a quick look around online retailers shows that it will typically save you a mere £2 over the GT, which set alarm bells ringing straight away for us.

The price problem is compounded by the results. Crysis was only really playable at medium settings or lower, and the GSO's 51fps lagged behind the 59fps of the GT.

In Far Cry 2 at high settings, the GT produced a playable 33fps, but the GSO struggled to just 25fps. And in the only playable Call of Juarez test, at low settings, the GT had the beating of it by a sizeable margin of 62fps to 48fps.

In short, the 9600 GSO's decent performance is made largely irrelevant by the existence of the 9600 GT, as its almost identical price gets you significantly more gaming performance.

And then you must also consider the HD 4670, which produced frame rates only a little below the GSO and GT's at a cheaper £58, putting the final nail in this graphics card's coffin.

Author: Mike Jennings