Is a 9600 GSO ok for Physx acceleration?

[Mungri]

I've spotted a 9600 GSO on clearance for just £33 and am wondering if this is worth buying as a Physx card or if it will be too slow?

Its an Asus EN9600GSO Magic, after reading up on it it is a 1000 Mhz DDR2 128 bit card, it seems too slow, but it supports physx and is just over £30.

[majkel84]

It's first reasonable card for PhysX just after 9600GT

As it is 96ps it's just a little slower than 9800gt and quite more than 9600GT (64ps).

Typical results for Vantage CPU test2 (5870 + Nvidia card as PhysX) :

9600GSO 384MB ddr3 130fps
Gts 250 155fps
gtx260 179 fps

so it's enough and quite nice as for card worth 33L


But DO NOT buy 512MB/1GB version. It has 48ps and is slightly slower than 9600GT. Only 384/762MB versions are worth buying.

[Hidamari295GTX]

Maybe, since it's memory is GDDR II...

[Mungri]

Yea, this 9600 GSO is £33, then the 9600 GT is £59, and the 9800 GT on clearance is £67:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Index.aspx?NT=...-0&Clearance=1

It would be between the 9600 GSO and 9800 GT, but I'm not too keen on spending twice as much if the 9600 GSO will work as a Physx card.

Or if I get the 9800 GT, I'm also set for a huge future Lucid setup too. I need a single slot card, but think I have enough space to fit in the cooler if I remove the plastic shroud between the PSU and Mobo chambers of my Antec P182. The 9600GSO looks low profile enough to fit, but I dont think the 9800 GT would unless I buy a smaller cooler for it.

But DO NOT buy 512MB/1GB version. It has 48ps and is slightly slower than 9600GT. Only 384/762MB versions are worth buying.

This one is being listed as 96 cores though, it is just reduced to a 128 bit bus width:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/512MB...-DL-DVI-I-HDTV

Newegg says the same thing:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121255

Model
Brand ASUS
Model EN9600GSO MAGIC/HTDP/512M
Interface
Interface PCI Express 2.0 x16
Chipset
Chipset Manufacturer NVIDIA
GPU GeForce 9600 GSO
Core Clock 550MHz
Stream Processors 96
Memory
Memory Clock 1000MHz
Memory Size 512MB
Memory Interface 128-bit
Memory Type GDDR2

So it has 96 shaders, but only 128b bit DDR2 memory as the downside, but is just £33.

I'm waiting for Scan support to let me know if it is definately 96 or 48 shaders. If its only 48 then I'll pass and wait for future price reductions.

[Renemity73]

Im seeing a pretty good increase in fps if you have a physx card... but using a gtx 295... will i really see that HUGE of a difference?

thanks

[davidm71]

I have a 9600GSO and the physx performance was alright. I actually replaced it with an EVGA 9800GT due to the increase in shaders and my Batman score went down a couple points. I think it was becuase of the 9600GSO had a higher shader clock despite less shaders. Using a 285 you get like a 5-10 percent fps increase on my 680i machine. I am curious how that would play out on an i7 rig without cpu bottlenecks. But there you go...