Power Consumption and Conclusions
NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT Review - Budget Gaming Redux - Graphics Cards 41

The similarities between the 8600 GTS and the 9500 GT continue as we look at the power consumption numbers – both idle and load power consumption numbers are virtually identical.

Performance

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.  In some rare instances you MIGHT be able to find an HD 3850 card for a price in the same neighborhood though, so be on the lookout for that bargain if you can. 

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. 

NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT Review - Budget Gaming Redux - Graphics Cards 42
Note the markings – this chip is A1 silicon

Even though we didn’t get a chance to test it, the 9500 GT should scale very well in an SLI configuration (and does according to NVIDIA’s internal performance numbers).  I’d really like to see how a pair of 9500 GTs stand up to a single 9800 GTX as they are similarly priced configurations…

Features

Thanks to NVIDIA’s persistence in catching up with AMD in the features department, the 9500 GT offers up a full gamut of neat little extras for the end user.  PureVideo HD supports high performance HD content decode acceleration, HDMI output is supported with audio pass-through and SLI continues to stretch itself over the entire NVIDIA ecosystem. 

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:
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:

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