Nvidia 9600GT first details

Expreview got a first glimpse at the specifications of the upcoming performance-mainstream card from Nvidia, and the first from the GeForce 9 series, the 9600GT.
It will be made with the same 65nm process as the G92 which powers the 8800GT and 8800GTS 512MB cards. The codenames for the chip are D9P and G96 and it should come with 64 shader processors, a 256-bit memory interface with 512MB at 2GHz and a 500MHz core clock in a new PCB design. Clocks for the shader processors were not disclosed yet.

These specs seem kind of off. The 256-bit width for the memory interface is of a surprise to me and I applaud the decision, but coupled with memory chips so fast? In a card with half the shader processors of the full blown G92, that supports the same 256-bit memory interface?
The size of the chip seems to right for that 64SP claim, but either the card is gonna have a 128-bit memory interface or slower memory. 500MHz also seems to be too little, they could pump it to 650MHz they use in the 8800GTS and still they wouldn't menace the 8800GS. After all, the 65nm process has more than proven that 650MHz is allowed on a more complex chip, let alone one with half it's the size and a smaller power consumption; that way it would leave the 500MHz clock for an 9600GS.
Unless Nvidia has something up it's sleeves that could require this kind of bandwidth, this is a change in behavior from the normal mainstream designs from Nvidia that will require some further investigation. In any case AA and AF performance will be a lot better with this amount of bandwidth.

If these early specs are indeed true, what we will have here is a treat for budget overclockers. We will have plenty of bandwidth real estate to play with, allowing the capitalize on the extra power of a very overclocked GPU; 700MHz shouldn't be too hard to hit, making this a departure from the traditionally bandwidth limited affordable graphics cards.

Inclusion of DirectX 10.1 support is yet unknown, while PCI-Express 2.0 support is assured.
The expected launch date is February 14th, 2008 - Valentine's day, so the first samples for review should be popping up anytime.
Keywords: G92 Nvidia G96 9600GT 512MB 256-bit 8800GS