PC Perspective - NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT Review

	NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT Review - Budget Gaming Redux
	Author: Ryan Shrout Date: Jul 29, 2008 Subject: Graphics Card Manufacturer: NVIDIA

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Summary

The following is a summary of the more detailed analysis of the NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT 256MB graphics card. For all the in-depth analysis and testing you'd expect from us, be sure to click this link to get all the details!

Click this link to get the full article

Don't get me wrong - I love products like the GeForce GTX 280 and the Radeon HD 4870 X2 as much, if not more than, the next guy. But I also am privy to the truth: the GPU giants make their cash on cards like the new GeForce 9500 GT. Though not as sexy and exciting as the world of uber-expensive and super-high-end graphics cards the budget graphics parts are gobbled up by hungry OEMs looking to build a "gaming" system and users with consistent wallet deficiency.

The GeForce 9500 GT card itself is very unassuming - a simple single-slot cooler design that is not at all noisy and no power connection required other than the power provided by the PCI Express bus.

Let's see some quick performance comparison numbers:

It is usually in this section that we can talk about the new levels of performance that a fresh GPU has brought upon the PC market but since this particular card sits in the budget segment, the performance is nothing we haven't seen before. That being said, the new GeForce 9500 GT did perform very well when compared to AMD's current budget level competition, the Radeon HD 3650.

The GeForce 9500 GT was able to play through some of the latest titles at decent image quality settings very well. A line up like Call of Duty 4, Unreal Tournament 3 and Crysis is nothing to sneeze at - especially when you take into account the price point that you'll find this card selling for.

Pricing and Availability

Though these cards aren't going to be available until the middle of this week at the earliest, NVIDIA estimates that the MSRP for the GeForce 9500 GT will fall in at $90 or so - depending on the configuration of memory the price could vary as much as $10-20. If we compare that $90 price to our other competing cards in this review we'll see this:

BFG 8600 GTS 256MB - $117
NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT 256MB - $90
Sapphire HD 3650 512MB - $78

In this light the new 9500 GT is going to be quite a good deal for a budget card; with performance nearly matching that of the 8600 GTS card and far exceeding the HD 3650, a $90 9500 GT is a good buy for budget gamers.

Final Thoughts

While it's not going to light most enthusiast pants on fire, the GeForce 9500 GT should excite those intended targets like extremely-budget builders and OEMs. With $90 graphics cards like this it hard to see how the PC can be doubted as a top gaming platform for the future.

Be sure to use our pricing engine to find the best prices on NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards and anything else you might need:

Click here for the Detailed Review