NVIDIA intros sub-$100 GeForce 9500 GT
updated 01:30 pm EDT, Tue July 29, 2008
NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT
NVIDIA took on the lower end of graphics today by introducing the GeForce 9500 GT. The single-slot PCI Express design is the first GeForce 9 series model to dip below the $100 price mark but uses a combination of manufacturing process improvements and other refinements to push performance as much as three times higher than an 8500 series chip. The company reduces the price of the 9500 GT by dropping the number of effects processors to 32 while keeping the 550MHz core and 800MHz actual memory speeds of the more expensive 9600 GSO.
The new card still supports full hardware acceleration of common HD video formats and supports SLI for pairing two cards together for faster performance on Windows systems. Boards using the 9500 GT should already be available from several card manufacturers such as ASUS, XFX, and others, with most sub-$99 models carrying 256MB of memory. NVIDIA hasn't yet announced any of its plans for major PC builders but often supplies the chipsets to larger system designers.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Feb 2008
"effects processors" ?
ARGH! I swear to god, I am going to continue commenting about this everytime I see it because it drives me crazy!
What the h*** is with the "effects processors" term? It's not just a matter of semantics, that term doesn't even make technical sense, as they process all types of data and not just
"effects" (whatever that means).
I've never heard anyone else in the entire industry use that word. "Stream processors", "SPs", "shader cores", "unified shaders", etc.