InnoVision disappeared from the Russian market long ago. It's possible to find some of its products in stores from time to time, but shipments to Russia are not sent on the regular basis. This company also abandoned Russian test labs. In particular, we haven't tested Inno3D cards for a long time already.

So this is a unique article, where we examine new products from this company and evaluate two graphics cards based on GeForce 9500 GT and 9800 GT. Note that all Inno3D cards are traditionally based on NVIDIA processors.

In fact, Inno3D products (InnoVision is headquartered in Hong Kong, but its plant is situated in China) used to be very popular in Russia, it was one of the oldest former-noname brands, just like Palit or Sparkle. That is, in the dawn of graphics cards, products from this company had been sold in our parts as noname products, low quality incarnate. All monitors had been analog CRT devices at that time, so the quality of output filters and RAMDACs on graphics cards had been very important. And we tested not only 3D performance, but also 2D image quality. Testers waged heated arguments how to systematize analysis of VGA image quality. Then we found out that image quality depended on many factors, and our reviews constantly reminded to our readers that image quality depended on a given sample of a graphics card, monitor, and cable. That was when all noname cards demonstrated mostly low quality. Which proved that saving on high quality filters and circuitry in general was no good.

Inno3D cards were also criticized for that and high percentage of defects in general. Later we found out that InnoVision had nothing to do with this mess. Other small companies in China manufactured graphics cards and applied Inno3D stickers. We even published articles where we taught our readers how to distinguish between a fake and an authentic Inno3D. However, the company itself did not do much to solve this problem. The quality became much better though, products from this company were shipped in a constant stream and won certain weight.

Then something got out of order. We don't know what happened exactly, but the stream of these products went dry, distributors refused to import InnoVision cards. Perhaps it was severe competition and more interesting offers from other companies. Or the problem was in InnoVision and higher defect ratio. It's hard to tell. But the fact remains -- Inno3D's popularity curve in Russia slided down again.

Today we are going to examine a couple of new cards from this company -- one of them is equipped with 1 GB of memory.

Card design

Inno3D GeForce 9800 GT 1024MB
GPU: GeForce 9800 GT (G92) Interface:xpress x16 GPU frequencies (ROPs/Shaders): 600/1512 MHz (nominal 600/1512 MHz) Memory frequencies (physical (effective)): 900 (1800) MHz (nominal 900 (1800) MHz) Memory bus width: 256bit Vertex processors: - Pixel processors: - Unified processors: 112 Texture processors: 64 (28) (BLF) ROPs: 16 Dimensions: 220x100x15 mm (the last figure is maximum thickness of the graphics card) PCB color: green RAMDACs/TDMS: integrated into GPU Output connectors: 2xDVI (Dual-Link/HDMI), TV-Out VIVO: not available TV-out: integrated into GPU Multi-GPU operation: SLI (Hardware)
Inno3D GeForce 9500 GT 512MB
GPU: GeForce 9500 GT (G96) Interface:xpress x16 GPU frequencies (ROPs/Shaders): 550/1350 MHz (nominal 550/1400 MHz) Memory frequencies (physical (effective)): 700 (1400) MHz (nominal 800 (1600) MHz) Memory bus width: 128bit Vertex processors: - Pixel processors: - Unified processors: 32 Texture processors: 16 ROPs: 8 Dimensions: 170x100x15 mm (the last figure is maximum thickness of the graphics card) PCB color: green RAMDACs/TDMS: integrated into GPU Output connectors: 2xDVI (1xDual-Link), TV-Out VIVO: not available TV-out: integrated into GPU Multi-GPU operation: SLI (Hardware)

Inno3D GeForce 9800 GT 1024MB
The graphics card has 1024 MB of GDDR3 SDRAM allocated in eight Samsung chips on the front side of the PCB. Maximum clock rate: 1000 (2000) MHz.
Inno3D GeForce 9500 GT 512MB
The graphics card has 512 MB of GDDR3 SDRAM allocated in four Samsung chips on the front side of the PCB. Maximum clock rate: 700 (1400) MHz.

Comparison with the reference design, front view
Inno3D GeForce 9800 GT 1024MB	Reference card NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT
Inno3D GeForce 9500 GT 512MB	Reference card NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT

Comparison with the reference design, back view
Inno3D GeForce 9800 GT 1024MB	Reference card NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT
Inno3D GeForce 9500 GT 512MB	Reference card NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT

The concept of both cards is a tad different from the reference design, but not much. Inno3D 9800 GT has one big disadvantage -- it lacks the GPU memory controller. Sacrificed to reduce production costs.

Besides, the 9800 GT is marked G92-270-A2, just like the 8800 GT. That is this card uses the same 65ns G92.

The 9500 GT also has a drawback: its nominal frequencies are lower than in the reference card, and one of its DVIs is Single Link instead of Dual Link, so the maximum resolution is supports is only 1280x1024.

All cards have original TV-Out interfaces that require a special adapter to output video to a TV set via S-Video or RCA.

An analog monitor with a D-Sub (VGA) interface can be connected by means of a special DVI-to-D-Sub adapter. Also bundled are DVI-to-HDMI adapters (these graphics cards support video/audio output to HDMI receivers), so there should be no problems with such monitors.

Maximum resolutions and frequencies:

• 240 Hz maximum refresh rate
• 2048 x 1536 x 32bit @ 85Hz Max - analog interface
• 2560 x 1600 @ 60Hz Max - digital interface (all Dual-Link DVIs)

As of MPEG2 playback (DVD-Video), we analyzed this issue in 2002. Little has changed since that time. CPU load during video playback on modern graphics cards does not exceed 25%.

As of HDTV, a review is available here.

Note that the 9800 GT card requires additional power supply, so it should be bundled with a molex to 6-pin adapter, even though all modern PSUs are equipped with these cables.

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