DailyTech
reports that NVIDIA's newest mid-range processor, codenamed D9M, will make
its official debut as the GeForce 9600 GT. Corporate guidance from NVIDIA lists
the initial GeForce 9600 GT shipments come stock with a 650 MHz core clock and a
1625 MHz unified shader clock. Unlike the G84 core found on GeForce 8600 GT, D9M
will feature a 256-bit memory bus interface. Coupled with a 900 MHz memory
clock, NVIDIA calculates the memory bandwidth at 57.6 GB/s. The texture fill
rate is estimated at 20.8 billion pixels per second. The company would not
indicate how many shaders or stream processors reside on the D9M core.
Other details of the D9M family have already surfaced.
ChileHardware published slides yesterday claiming the GeForce 9600 requires
a 400W power supply that requires 26A on the 12V rail. Unlike previous mid-range
GeForce cards, the D9M will require a 6-pin supplementary power connector.
NVIDIA publicly confirmed other details of D9M: DirectX 10.1 support, Shader
Model 4.0, OpenGL 2.1 and PCIe 2.0 support just to name a few. Further
documentation from NVIDIA claims the 9600 GT will also support the Quantum
Effects physics processing engine. NVIDIA declined to comment on expected price
of GeForce 9600. A representative for NVIDIA would comment that the performance
increase between GeForce 9600 and GeForce 8600 is "almost double."