Sparkle GeForce 9500GT 1GB

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Sparkle GeForce 9500GT 1GB

We've checked out ATI's Radeon HD 4550 low-end graphics card already and found it to be a nice solution for Linux users on a budget, but how does NVIDIA's competitor contend? In this review we are looking at the NVIDIA GeForce 9500GT from Sparkle. This graphics card has 1GB of DDR2 memory along with DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort connectors.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=13085

[Kano]

That's a typical lowend card with useless graphics memory. 1 GB sounds cool, but it does not benefit at all from it. Less but faster RAM would be the smarter choice. Even midrage cards with 512 MB have enough memory, for the slow memory access 128 bit compared to 256 bit of a 9600 GT even 256 MB would be fine, as most ppl would run it in pretty low resolution modes only. The only thing you can say is that RAM is really cheap now... the diff between 256 and 512 mb variants with only DDR2 ram is about 3 euro.

[Xwang]

What about comparing nvidia and ati cards which have similar target market?
Xwang

[RealNC]

Useless card. This card completely lacks the power to make use of resolutions and filters where the 1GB RAM becomes important (1920x1080 with 8xAA and 16xAF). This card will run games at a slideshow speed at this resolution.

I recommend everyone stays far away from this card.

[sc3252]

Why is the 8800gt slower than the 9600gt? Did you mix up the numbering?

[Kano]

Because he uses a 256 MB version...

[psycho_driver]

What about comparing nvidia and ati cards which have similar target market?
Xwang

That might make ATi look bad.

[spinctrl]

These reviews are helpful to compare general performance benchmarks, and details about the fan noise, power connectors and consumption (watts) are cruicial.

Having said that, the review does leave me wondering if the sound works through the HDMI/Displayport outputs?

I am on the look out for a Displayport graphics card to power my Dell 3008WFP 30" 2560x1600 monitor. My old Geforce 6600 didn't support dual-link DVI. Now I have an ATI 3650 with DP, DVI, but no HDMI.

The ATI fglrx driver always gave me problems, and never seems to work with current kernels or compile without issue.

NVidia have always had the best binary drivers, and I would like to buy this card for an always on machine where power usage is an important factor, as is a fast desktop and apps such as google earth.

However, the review doesn't provide the product number/id -- and I can't find this Sparkle card with DP/HDMI/DVI in the US or UK.

The review could benefit from a boilerplate update that addresses a few more use case senarios and not just Doom/Quake, etc. What's Beryl like with a huge desktop, or KDE's plasma/translucency.

Does 1Gb memory help with a large 2560x1600 desktop?!

It's sgreat to see products liek this reviewed for linux though!

[hdas]

i dont have answers to your hdmi related questions, but I might suggest to look at at least 9600t or preferably 9800gt and with at least 512mb gddr3 RAM. 9500gt is slow and ddr2 is slow too. 1gb video meory on this card is frankly worthless (read, it cant ace crysis) - except may be for running two displays of the 2560x1600 resolution you mentioned along with vdpau decoding of 1080p. as such, even my notebook with 8400m gs with 256mb (128mb dedicated) will do 2560x1600 but runs out of ram for vdpau when using two displays.

[spinctrl]

i dont have answers to your hdmi related questions, but I might suggest to look at at least 9600t or preferably 9800gt and with at least 512mb gddr3 RAM. 9500gt is slow and ddr2 is slow too. 1gb video meory on this card is frankly worthless (read, it cant ace crysis) - except may be for running two displays of the 2560x1600 resolution you mentioned along with vdpau decoding of 1080p. as such, even my notebook with 8400m gs with 256mb (128mb dedicated) will do 2560x1600 but runs out of ram for vdpau when using two displays.

I agree that the additional memory, cheap as it may be, is not going to increase performance much -- though it should help with triple-buffering, and many large texture maps (google earth?). Interesting about the vram maxing with 2 large displays. At least nvidia has dual display support, I don't think ATI fglrx does!

I had a FireGL 5000 (HP nw8240) running linux, and getting s3 suspend to ram to work was practically impossible, and ATI had poor/no support for many X features... Have been using nvidias binary driver since it's first release without half the trouble.

Presently what I have is this card with a DisplayPort, DVI, and HDMI connector that came pre-installed in my Dell Vostro 420:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=985&num=1

It's low power consumption, low heat, and low noise, coupled with great outputs (I need DisplayPort for my 2560x1600 30" 3008WFP display), make the card seem a good choice for general desktop work: qt/kde dev, graphics processing, vdpau, XV video, x compositing, and some OpenGL.

My problem is the ATI fglrx drive is a lot worse than the Nvidia binary drivers. The ATI driver won't compile/install well with the current kernel 2.6.28, and doesn't seem to enable the DisplayPort so I have to use DVI -- thicker cable with no audio.

Yes, I would buy an nvidia GTX 285 if it could be made to run at 50W the 350days a year I wasn't playing Crysis. That said, I wan't a quiet card too!

The reason I want a low wattage nvidia is for the better driver/module support. A 9400 or 9500GT seems ideal -- take a look at the TDP/Watts here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_9_Series

I might get this 9600GT, since it has DP, HDMI:
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1GB-Palit-XVision-9600GT-Sonic-PCI-E-20-Mem2000MHz-DDR3-GPU700MHz-64-Cores-2xDL-DVI-I-HDMI-DP

The above card was hard to find, and it's double height... that's why a product number for the original reviewed 9500GT would have helped!

[spinctrl]

i dont have answers to your hdmi related questions, but I might suggest to look at at least 9600t or preferably 9800gt and with at least 512mb gddr3 RAM. 9500gt is slow and ddr2 is slow too. 1gb video meory on this card is frankly worthless (read, it cant ace crysis) - except may be for running two displays of the 2560x1600 resolution you mentioned along with vdpau decoding of 1080p. as such, even my notebook with 8400m gs with 256mb (128mb dedicated) will do 2560x1600 but runs out of ram for vdpau when using two displays.

I agree that the additional memory, cheap as it may be, is not going to increase performance much -- though it should help with triple-buffering, and many large texture maps (google earth?). Interesting about the vram maxing with 2 large displays. At least nvidia has dual display support, I don't think ATI fglrx does!

I had a FireGL 5000 (HP nw8240) running linux, and getting s3 suspend to ram to work was practically impossible, and ATI had poor/no support for many X features... Have been using nvidias binary driver since it's first release without half the trouble.

Presently what I have is this card with a DisplayPort, DVI, and HDMI connector that came pre-installed in my Dell Vostro 420:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=985&num=1

It's low power consumption, low heat, and low noise, coupled with great outputs (I need DisplayPort for my 2560x1600 30" 3008WFP display), make the card seem a good choice for general desktop work: qt/kde dev, graphics processing, vdpau, XV video, x compositing, and some OpenGL.

My problem is the ATI fglrx drive is a lot worse than the Nvidia binary drivers. The ATI driver won't compile/install well with the current kernel 2.6.28, and doesn't seem to enable the DisplayPort so I have to use DVI -- thicker cable with no audio.

Yes, I would buy an nvidia GTX 285 if it could be made to run at 50W the 350days a year I wasn't playing Crysis. That said, I wan't a quiet card too!

The reason I want a low wattage nvidia is for the better driver/module support. A 9400 or 9500GT seems ideal -- take a look at the TDP/Watts here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_9_Series

I might get this 9600GT, since it has DP, HDMI:
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1GB-Palit-XVision-9600GT-Sonic-PCI-E-20-Mem2000MHz-DDR3-GPU700MHz-64-Cores-2xDL-DVI-I-HDMI-DP

The above card was hard to find, and it's double height... that's why a product number for the original reviewed 9500GT would have helped!