nVidia Geforce 9 vs. Geforce 8
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The Geforce 9 series is the latest GPU release from nVidia. The only specific card in the series so far is the 9600 GT, compared to the top 8 series card below:
| Card | Core Clock | Shader Clock | Memory Clock | Memory Amount | Memory Interface | Memory Bandwidth | Texture Fill Rate |
| 9600 | 650 | 1625 | 900 | 512MB | 256-bit | 57.6 | 20.8 |
| 8800 | 612 | 1500 | 1080 | 768MB | 384-bit | 103.7 | 39.2 |
As you can see from the above data, the GF9 series has improved on the general core itself, with a slightly higher core clock and shader clock than it’s top-of-the-line predecessor. However, the difference in speed is negligible. For overall gaming and computing power, the GF8800 still overpowers the GF9600, as evidenced by the memory, memory interface, and other data.
When you take into account the second digit of this card’s designation (the ‘6′ in 9600), versus the one of the 8 series card, you can tell that the 9800 will easily overpower the 8800. The cards with a 6 as their second digit tend to be mid-range gaming system cards, respectable but not the best. The cards with the second digit of ‘8′ are the best cards out there from nVidia. If the 9600 is even comparable to the 8800, and in many areas it is, this spells out a very powerful forecast for the 9800 card.
While the 9 series does look to be promising, if you’re buying your new PC today, I’d avoid it and still go for a high-end 8 series card like the 8800 Ultra. If you can find it, my personal favorite (and what I use) is the 8800 GTX OC.
Update:
The full 9 series has been out for a while, and people are still checking my article, so I figured it would be rude of me not to update it.
The 9800 does not offer enough of an improvement to be worth the money, and waiting until you can afford a GTX 280 is a much better investment. The 9 series turned out to just be a bridge to the next series.
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