Asus EN9600 GT

Manufacturer: Asus Part number: EN9600GT/HTDI/512M

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$109.99 - $222.19 at 9 online stores

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CNET Editor rating:
4.0 stars Excellent
Average user rating: 5.0 stars out of 4 reviews

Feb 2008

More product information:: Editors' review; User reviews; Specifications; Manufacturer info

Bottom Line:: Nvidia's new GeForce 9600 GT graphics chip gives the Asus EN9600 GT some of the best bang-for-the-buck we've seen in a midrange 3D card. If your goal is reliable frame rates in the latest PC games, you should pick this card up as soon as you can.

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CNET editors' review

Asus EN9600 GT

price range: $109.99 - $222.19

Reviewed by: Rich Brown
Reviewed on: 02/21/2008
Released on: 02/21/2008

The good: Faster performance than anything from ATI in this price range; makes most games playable at medium or better quality settings (depending on resolution); box includes all necessary cables and adapters.

The bad: Still requires audio pass-through cable for audio output over HDMI.

The bottom line: Nvidia's new GeForce 9600 GT graphics chip gives the Asus EN9600 GT some of the best bang-for-the-buck we've seen in a midrange 3D card. If your goal is reliable frame rates in the latest PC games, you should pick this card up as soon as you can.

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ATI's Radeon HD 3850 returned respectability to the $150 to $200 3D graphics card last year. Unfortunately for ATI, Nvidia's new GeForce 9600 GT chip wrests the midrange crown away and knocks out a more expensive contender in the process. Cards that use Nvidia's new chip, like the Asus EN9600GT featured here, will go for about $175, and they deliver generally faster performance than an ATI card that retails for around $200. If you're a home theater PC builder and you have an aversion to internal cables, you might balk; but if you're a gamer looking for a 3D card bargain, you should put the GeForce 9600 GT at the top of your list.

Despite the new 9000-series product line, the GeForce 9600 GT relies on the same core architecture as the new GeForce 8800 GT chip from earlier this year. If you ask Nvidia, you'll get a different story, but our hunch is that the chip graduated to a new number at least partly because ATI recently bumped its own chips up from the 2000 series to the 3000 series last November, despite no major update to the processing core. Keeping up with the Joneses aside, the GeForce 9600 GT might as well be a new card for the vast improvement it brings at its price point compared with the GeForce 8600 GT from last year.

Before we get into the benchmarks, though, we'll compare the core specs of the GeForce 9600 GT with its closest competitor, the Radeon HD 3870. Nvidia originally compared its new chip with the less expensive Radeon HD 3850, but we might as well look at the higher-end ATI chip, because the 9600 GT beats them both.

	Asus EN9600 GT	ATI Radeon HD 3870
Price	$169 - $189	$199 - $250
Manufacturing process	65nm	55nm
Core clock	650MHz	775MHz
Stream processors	64	320
Memory	512MB	512MB
Memory speed (data rate)	1.8GHz	2.25GHz
Memory Interface	256-bit	256-bit

You can bet it's no accident that Nvidia's pricing for the GeForce 9600 GT comes in right between the $150 Radeon HD 3850 and the $200 or so Radeon HD 3870. And while such small price differences make recommendations hard because of price changes over time, in this case those fluctuations won't matter, because the new Nvidia chip beats ATI in both directions.

3DMark 2006
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

1,280x1,024

320MB Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS

11,323

512MB Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT

10,793

512MB ATI Radeon HD 3870

9,146

256MB ATI Radeon HD 3850

8,488

256MB Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS

6,331

256MB ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT

5,164

Crysis (in frames per second)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

1,280x1,024 (medium quality)

320MB Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS

512MB Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT

512MB ATI Radeon HD 3870

256MB ATI Radeon HD 3850

256MB Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS

256MB ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT

Call of Duty 4 (in frames per second)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

1,280x1,024 (high quality)

320MB Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS

512MB Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT

512MB ATI Radeon HD 3870

256MB ATI Radeon HD 3850

256MB Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS

256MB ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT

Unreal Tournament 3 (in frames per second)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

1,600x1,200 (maximum quality)

320MB Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS

512MB ATI Radeon HD 3870

512MB Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT

256MB ATI Radeon HD 3850

256MB Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS

256MB ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT

So what of those benchmarks? First, on both Call of Duty 4 and Unreal Tournament 3, the GeForce 9600 GT pushes past the hallowed ground of 60 frames per second (fps). We kept the resolutions reasonable in the interest of playability, and as long as you do the same, you can expect the GeForce 9600 GT to surpass the Radeon HD 3850 and at least tie the Radeon 3870. Hitting 60 fps on Crysis remains elusive, even at medium detail settings, but the GeForce 9600 GT comes closer than anyone else in its price ballpark, and at 48 fps, you should find it playable most of the time.

For fun, our compatriot Sarju Shah at Gamespot threw in the older 320MB GeForce 8800 GTS card when he conducted his testing (and then graciously shared his results with us). That card cost $300 when it launched last February, but now hovers around $200 online. If you can find it for that price, we'd suggest you pick it up, but we don't think it will remain in stock for too much longer.

Of course, that 8800 GTS card does not come with PCI-Express 2.0 support. In the short term, that won't mean too much. PCI-Express 2.0 is aimed at future PC gaming titles that may require more data bandwidth than older PCI Express ports can offer. A few PCI Express motherboards are starting to trickle out now, but from what we've seen, they offer no performance advantage in current titles, including Crysis. That the GeForce 9600 GT cards have PCI-E 2.0 support means that when those games do become available, and if you have a supporting motherboard, at least you'll know that with this card the graphics slot itself isn't the choke point. But by the time PCI-E 2.0 becomes necessary, you might very well be shopping for a new graphics card. So don't purchase this card, or any other today, just because it supports PCI-Express 2.0. It's mostly a future-proofing consideration.

If we're disappointed about anything having to do with the GeForce 9600 GT, it's that Nvidia didn't include an onboard audio chip in the new design. That remains one of ATI's advantages, in that it saves you from having to connect a separate internal audio pass-through cable from your PC to your graphics card in order to send audio through the HDMI output. It's a minor feather in ATI's cap, and Asus helps take the edge off by including both a DVI-to-HDMI adapter as well as the audio cable in the box with its EN9600 GT card. ATI retains the advantage in adding its cards to a home theater PC because of the less complicated setup. Anything in this price range is overkill, however, if all you're after is a 3D card capable of playing HD movies from your PC.

Otherwise, adding the GeForce 9600 GT to a standard PC is no more difficult than any other midrange 3D card. You need to connect it directly to your PC's power supply via a six-pin connector, and Asus also includes a power cable adapter in the box as well. Because it's a single-slot design, you should be able to fit the GeForce 9600 GT in any standard desktop with a PCI-Express slot. It also supports Nvidia's SLI dual-graphics card technology. For a single card, Nvidia recommends your system have a 400-watt power supply. For double cards, tack on another 150 to 200 watts or so and you should be fine.

Test bed:
Windows Vista Ultimate (32-bit); 3.2GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9775; Intel D5400XS motherboard; 4GB DDR2 SDRAM (2x2GB); 750GB Seagate 7200rpm hard drive; ATI Catalyst 8.2, Nvidia ForceWare beta 169.28, Nvidia Forceware beta 174.12.

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User reviews

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Average user rating: 5.0 stars out of 4 reviews
My rating: 0 stars

Showing opinion 1 to 4 out of 4

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10 stars

amazingly priced for amazing performance

by williamhuds on August 15, 2008

Pros: plays crysis on very high settings to some extent, i got it for 100 bucks at best buy, it makes me confident that my pc can handle good games now

Cons: none except it required me to buy a new psu
9 stars

Great graphics card but no audio chip

by Avidlistener on June 2, 2008

Pros: Great performance. Overclocks nicely.

Cons: no audiochip.

Summary: I bought this card so I could run games with all settings on high and also so that I could play blu-ray. In order to get sound to my surround ...

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Summary: I bought this card so I could run games with all settings on high and also so that I could play blu-ray. In order to get sound to my surround sound system I had to buy an optical cable and an HDMI cable adding 20 bucks to the total cost. Having a built in audiochip would be very nice but there is a question I have. Is ATI's processor capable of outputting 5.1 surround sound at least? If not I don't consider it that big of a deal since if you are making a HTPC you will probably be investing in a 5.1 sound card. Also I disagree with the author that this is overkill for playing HD movies. Many people have struggled with lower cards to render blu-ray. I would definitely not consider this card overkill.

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10 stars

Very good card!

by Zipppy-art on May 22, 2008

Pros: Everything is good, it runs even the most CPU and GPU-intensive games at at least 70 FPS on a 1024 x 768 screen

Cons: I really can't find any cons

Summary: I like this card, it's quieter than my old computer, it just exceeded my expectations through the roof. I'll never want to get another card ever again!

Summary: I like this card, it's quieter than my old computer, it just exceeded my expectations through the roof. I'll never want to get another card ever again!
10 stars

Excellent budget video card

by anonymous x on March 4, 2008

Pros: Very low price, performance rivaling cards that cost more.

Cons: there are no cons

Summary: This is the card of this month.

review by anonymous x
anonymous x

Summary: This is the card of this month.

review by anonymous x
anonymous x

Showing opinion 1 to 4 out of 4

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Specifications

Manufacturer: Asus
Part number: EN9600GT/HTDI/512M
Description: PRODUCT FEATURES: ASUS Exclusive Glaciator Fansink ASUS Splendid: watching movies on PC is as good as on Top-of-the-line consumer television ASUS Gamer OSD: real-time overclocking, benchmarking and video capturing in any PC game! ASUS Smart Doctor: your intelligent hardware protection and overclocking tool Full Microsoft DirectX 10 Support HDCP compliant NVIDIA SLI Technology Dual Dual-link DVI Support Resolutions up to 2560x1600

General
Device Type Graphics adapter
Enclosure Type Plug-in card
Vista Capability This is a modern graphics card capable of running all the new features in Windows Vista, including the upcoming DirectX 10.
Interface Type PCI Express 2.0 x16
Depth 9 in
Height 4.4 in
Processor / Memory
Graphics Processor / Vendor NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT
Core Clock Speed 650 MHz
Graphics Card Performance This card is compatible with the new rendering features of DirectX 10, which is featured in the Windows Vista operating system.
Video Memory Installed 512 MB
Technology DDR3 SDRAM 256-bit
Memory Clock Speed 1.8 GHz
Features Nvidia SLI Multi-GPU Technology, ASUS GamerOSD, ASUS Video Security Online, ASUS SmartDoctor, ASUS Splendid Video Enhancing Technology, Glaciator Fansink
Video Input
Type None
Video Output
Max Resolution (external) 2560 x 1600
API Supported OpenGL 2.0, DirectX 10
Max Monitors Supported 2
TV Interface HDTV out
Analog Video Format Composite video, S-Video
Digital Video Standard High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI), Digital Visual Interface (DVI)
HDCP compatible Yes

Expansion / Connectivity
Interfaces 1 x HDTV output ( On supplied cable ), 2 x DVI-I (dual link) - 29 pin combined DVI, 1 x VGA - 15 pin HD D-Sub (HD-15) ( With adapter ), 1 x HDMI - 19 pin HDMI Type A ( On supplied cable ), 1 x S-video/composite output
Compatible Slots 1 x PCI Express 2.0 x16
Miscellaneous
Cables Included 1 x Audio (digital) cable, 1 x Video cable, 1 x DVI-VGA adapter, 1 x HDMI-DVI adapter
Software / System Requirements
Software Included Drivers & Utilities
Windows Vista Built for Windows Vista
Manufacturer Warranty
Service & Support 3 years warranty
Service & Support Details Limited warranty - 3 years

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Asus EN9600 GT

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