NVIDIA Launches Mainstream 9500 GT

Summer. Time for fun, beaches, warm weather, and new GPUs! Well, new GPUs show face all the time, so it’s not much of a surprise when a new one gets launched, but the latest entrant from NVIDIA might be worthy of attention if you are looking for a capable budget option. The 9500 GT is low-end in most regards, but it’s price currently hovers around ~$75, which is at least $35 less than a low-priced 9600 GT.

The new card features 314 million transistors, clock speeds of 550MHz/1400MHz, 32 stream processors, and a 128-bit memory bus width. Our friends at HotHardware have taken the new card for a spin, and though it didn’t come close to competing with the 9600 GT, it competed nicely with the 8600 GTS of yesteryear, which happened to debut at a much higher price.

Their results conclude that the 9500 GT is not going to prove to be a killer gaming card, although it is very capable. The 9600 GT delivered results almost twice as high as the 9500 GT in many of the tests, so the extra ~$35 – $40 it would take to equip yourself with one of those instead might be justified if you are at all planning to game regularly. But still, the lower power consumption, lower temps, size and of course, the price, might just make the card a real winner for some.

Credit: HotHardware

NVIDIA’s new GeForce 9500 GT is the company’s latest weapon in its arsenal of sub-$100 graphics cards but don’t let the relatively low price fool you. Of course the card won’t offer the same level of 3D performance as current high-end, more expensive products. However, its feature set is comparable to just about anything else on the market. And its power consumption is nice and low as well.