Forsa 9600 GSO – for thrifty overclockers

Making use of its success in the field of video cards, in particular, G92 graphic processor, NVIDIA has created another video card on its base. The most interesting is in that the new product is fully identical to the formerly presented GeForce 8800GS.

Both the video cards are based on G92 with 96 active universal processors, with both offering 384 MB of video memory and the 192-bit bus. The frequencies of the video cards are also identical: 550/1375 MHz for the graphic processor, and 1600 "true" MHz for the video memory. In fact, NVIDIA took the "old" GeForce 8800GS and renamed it to GeForce 9600 GSO. For these, the BIOS with new ID were written, with drives able "understanding" this ID released. So, what has NVIDIA re-made the old video card and released it as new? One of the reasons for such a move may be the great number of manufactured G92 chips, which ought to be sold before the emergence of the next family of video cards based on G92b chips which should differ from G92 by their new 55-nm process technology. Perhaps, the sales of GeForce 8800GS have not attained the required level, and NVIDIA wants to fix that through a new name. At the performance level, GeForce 8800GS is closer to GeForce 9600GT rather than to the other brethren in the 8800 family. We may go on guessing for a long time, but the fact is this: NVIDIA has presented a new video card, and our task is to examine it.

Forsa is among those manufacturers who use the same packaging for a whole series of their products. Therefore, Forsa has used the same package box for GeForce 9600GT.

We can find out about the model of the video card only from the label or on removing the video card itself.

The package bundle includes:

• DVI -> D-Sub adapter;
• S-video > Component out + S-video splitter;
• S-Video cable;
• drivers CD;

It is easy to see that Forsa has used its own PCB design for the manufacture of GeForce 9600 GSO. Apart from that, the developers have used a stiffening plate in the form of a black aluminum plate fastened from the side of the video card. This should increase the mechanical strength of the board and prevent it from fracture while sagging.

The trait of the design is about two power connectors, 6-pin for video cards and the "regular" 4-pin. They don't have to be plugged in simultaneously because Forsa has relieved itself from the need to add a power supply adapter into the package bundle of the video card, and saved users from trouble in case it is lost.

On the reverse side of the video card, there aren't any components which would be of interest to us, except the identification sticker with the specifications of the video card.

Under the cooling system on the front side of the video card, there is the graphic processor G92 and six video memory chips which make up the 384 MB capacity.

The graphic chip is marked as "G92-150".

The memory chips are made by Samsung and offer 1.0 ns access time, which is equivalent to the effective clock speed 2000 MHz. In fact, the memory chips run at a lower frequency – 1600 MHz DDR. As we can see, there is quite a substantial margin for overclocking.

The radiator of the cooling system has a copper insert whose heat is distributed over the aluminum plates using two heat pipes made of copper. The structure is cooled with a thin 80-mm fan.

Efficiency of the cooling system and overclocking

We'll be testing the efficiency of the cooling system of Forsa 9600 GSO using the Firefly Forest test from the 3DMark 06 suite. The test conditions: the resolution 1600x1200, 4-X FSAA, and 16-X AF. After nine runs of the test we produced the following results:

The new product warmed up to merely 50 degrees, however, there aren't many reasons to be delighted about that. The so good results have been attained at the expense of users' eyes who will have to listen to the noise coming from the onboard fan running without adjustment of the RPMs.

As regards the overclocking, the new product has proved to be on par. From the nominal 555/1350 MHz for the graphic processor and 1600 MHz for the video memory, Forsa 9600 GSO overclocked to 684/1728 and 2304 MHz for the graphic processor and the video memory, respectively. For that, we had to install a 120-mm fan for blowing the video card - otherwise, it overheated and hung. But the result was worth it, so we decided to test the new product in the overclocking mode. At the same time, if we treat 9600 GSO as a slowed-down version of GeForce 8800 GT, GeForce 8800 GTS 512, or GeForce 9800 GTX, then overclocking is simply a must for it. We'd like to draw your attention to the discrepancy of real clock speeds at which the video card runs, those "hardcoded" into its BIOS. That is related to the inner specifics of the GPU, because of which its clock speeds are adjustable in a certain increment. Therefore, during the video card's operation the values of clock speeds which are closest to those hardcoded into the BIOS are set.

Benchmarking and conclusions

We'll be running today's tests with the following configuration:

As contenders to Forsa 9600 GS0, we'll be using GeForce 9600GT and GeForce 8800GT. The former is closer to it in class, while the level of speed of the latter can be attained through overclocking. For all the three video cards, we used ForceWare 175.16 drivers. Following the tradition, we are examining the test results with 3DMark test suites.

At 3DMark tests, the overclocked video card Forsa 9600 GSO performs on par with GeForce 8800GT, and yields to GeForce 9600GT when not overclocked. Such results are quite predictable, because GeForce 9600 GSO, judging by the index, should be weaker than GeForce 9600 GT. Overclocking allows it to make a leap to the level of GeForce 8800GT, however, to compensate for the fewer number of active functional units in the graphic chip and the narrower memory bus, we had to raise the clock speeds substantially.

Let's move on to gaming tests which we'll be running with 16x AF enabled with the FSAA disabled.

At Call of Duty 4, the results for the overclocked Forsa 9600 GSO are almost close to those for GeForce 8800GT, but without overclocking the new product becomes an outsider.

At Crysis, the results for overclocked Forsa 9600 GSO almost go on par with those for GeForce 8800GT, but without overclocking the new product again takes the last place.

At Need for Pro Street Racing, the overclocked new product was able to leave GeForce 8800GT behind, which well demonstrates its capabilities.

At Call of Juarez, we see the same pattern as it is in the previous games. Overclocking makes 9600 GSO a true competitor to GeForce 8800GT, but without overclocking, in the nominal mode, 9600 GSO turns out to be an outsides among these three video cards.

At Need for Speed Carbon the situation preserves.

At Prey, the situation is repeating. By the way, Prey is demanding at the memory bandwidth. If we proceed from that, we can make a conclusion regarding the compensation of the fewer memory bus width using overclocking.

At Call of Juarez under Windows Vista, the overclocked new product anyway yields to GeForce 8800GT - the shortage of functional units makes itself felt. However, the lag is not substantial, and the gain from overclocking turned out to be within 32% to 37%.

At Crysis, overclocked Forsa 9600 GSO again takes the second place, yielding to GeForce 8800 GT, and without overclocking - yields to GeForce 9600 GT, as it should be as per its rank.

Final Words

There aren't any critical shortcomings in Forsa 9600 GSO, except the overly noise of its cooling system. The interior of the new product is noble - the G92 is a framework for powerful video cards like GeForce 8800GT or GeForce 8800GTS 512. Of course, in our case it has undergone some changes, namely, part of the functional blocks have been disabled with the memory bus width reduced, which we partly compensated for through overclocking. The results proved to be quite good: the video card which costs less than GeForce 9600GT was able to catch up with the more expensive GeForce 8800GT. On the other hand, we should make a reservation regarding intense cooling that we had to make use of in order to produce such impressive results, as well as regarding the video memory capacity which may be may be in shortage once FSAA is enabled. Therefore, you will have to make a certain compromise anyway On the whole, the video card has shown itself not bad indeed, and in the hands of the overclocker it is able revealing all its worth.