Nvidia has begun attempting to tempt its graphics card manufacturer partners with the GeForce 9600 GT chip, leaked presentation slides have revealed. Nvidia will pitch the part as "big on performance, easy on the wallet".

The GPU, apparently codenamed 'D9M', is a DirectX 10, Shader Model 4.0 product designed for PCI Express 2.0 cards. It'll be fabbed at 65nm, and Nvidia claims it will deliver a performance boost of up to 90 per cent over the GeForce 8600 GTS.

The 9600 GT's core will be clocked at 650MHz and connect to memory over a 256-bit bus running at 900MHz, DailyTech notes. It's not yet known how many unified-shader Stream Processors the chip will contain.

Slides leaked to Spanish-language site Chile Hardware, indicate the card's need for a 400W power supply and its provision for dual-link DVI with, interestingly, HDCP copy-protection supported in this mode - provided board vendors implement it, of course.

The site adds that the 9600 GT will come on cards fitted with 512MB of GDDR 3 memory. It'll do SLI, but only with one other card.

The GeForce 9600 GT's release date isn't yet known, but past reports have suggested a February introduction.

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