New GeForce 9 Card from NVIDIA

It seems that NVIDIA is preparing for another GeForce 9 series launch, the GeForce 9500, set to come to the market on July 29, 2008. The new graphics card is stated to be classified into the mid range level products, and it seems that the Santa Clara company will provide us with two versions, GeForce 9500 GDDR3 and GeForce 9500 DDR2.

Some rumored test results seem to set this new graphics solution as three times faster than the well known previous generation 8500 GT. A new feature of the 9500 board would be the addition of a 2-way SLI support. Certain specifications on the name of the new cards have not been published yet, but it is believed that the GDDR3 variant could receive the 9500 GT name, while the DDR2 model still needs to be provided with one. The images show the two versions of the graphics card, along with some specification sheets.

We stated above that the new card is rumored to provide about three time the performance level of the older GeForce 8500 GT, yet tests already conducted by some sites seem to show quite different results. After all, the card does not leave the 8500GT far behind, but it also needs quite a lot of power to operate, which may prove a great minus since energy efficiency is more than a trend.

Even when idling, the power consumption level of NVIDIA boards still remains a high one. For comparison, ATI graphic cards use less power with the help of PowerPlay. The power consumption of these cards drops below NVIDIA's mainly because the core clock goes to lower frequencies too. According to expreview, 9500 GT acts in a similar way PowerPlay does for ATI cards. The core clock lowers to 200MHz when idling, which provides more power efficiency. The tests were conducted using the 174.74 driver version.