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8-Way GeForce 9600 GT Roundup July 25, 2008 |
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Summary: In the market for a new GeForce 9600 GT graphics card? If so you'll want to check out today's roundup. Inside we're reviewed 8 different GeForce 9600 GT cards ranging from ASUS to Zogis. Some of the cards are overclocked, one ships with 1GB of memory, and many of them also boast dual-slot cooling. Check out where the card's stack up in this article!
 GeForce 9600 GT Roundup | Page:: ( 1 / 14 ) |
But what if you don’t want to spend $200 on a new graphics upgrade? What if you don’t even want to spend $150? Previously spending less than $150 on a GPU was heresy if you craved 3D performance. But now that same $150 buys you a card that’s more than capable of sustaining playable frame rates at 1600x1200 with 4xAA and all the visuals cranked up in most games.
NVIDIA’s GeForce 9600 GT is one such graphics card that meets this criteria. Based on NVIDIA’s G94 GPU, the GeForce 9600 GT is outfitted with just 64 shaders, but thanks to its high clock speeds (the GeForce 9600 GT is actually clocked closer to the 9800 GTX than the 8800 GT) and 256-bit memory interface, it’s quite a capable performer.
Officially the GeForce 9600 GT is supposed to carry an MSRP of $149, but street prices on retail cards are actually much lower: GeForce 9600 GT cards on Newegg can be found for as low as $95 after mail-in rebate, and under $120 without any rebates applied at all. This makes it one of the best graphics values for the money on the market today. In this article we’ll be taking a look at eight different GeForce 9600 GT cards. The cards represented here all boast a variety of traits; some are overclocked from the factory, while some rely on NVIDIA’s stock clocks; many even have custom dual-slot cooling.
Chances are if you’re shopping for a 9600 GT, you may have considered one of these cards.
The following chart summarizes the feature set of the cards we’re reviewing today:
| GeForce 9600 GT Cards Compared | ||||
| Card | Core Clock Speed | Stream Processor Clock Speed | Memory Speed | Game Bundle |
| ASUS EN9600 GT Silent | 650MHz | 1625MHz | 900MHz | None |
| BFG GeForce 9600 GT OCX w/ThermoIntelligence | 725MHz | 1850MHz | 975MHz | None |
| ECS N9600GT-512MX-P | 680MHz | 1728MHz | 925MHz | None |
| EVGA e-GeForce 9600 GT SSC | 740MHz | 1850MHz | 975MHz | None |
| MSI N9600 GT Hybrid Freezer 1GB OC | 700MHz | 1680MHz | 900MHz | None |
| Palit GeForce 9600 GT Sonic | 700MHz | 1750MHz | 1.0GHz | Tomb Raider Anniversary |
| XFX GeForce 9600 GT XXX | 740MHz | 1850MHz | 1.0GHz | Varies (Call of Duty 4, Company of Heroes) |
| Zogis GeForce 9600 GT | 650MHz | 1625MHz | 900MHz | None |
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As always with these roundups, we’re going in alphabetical order. First up is ASUS.
| ASUS EN9600 GT Silent | Page:: ( 2 / 14 ) |
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But it doesn’t stop with their TOP line of graphics cards. ASUS also offers cheaper cards based on the stock clock speeds and reference GeForce board design and cooling for consumers looking for the best bargains, and occasionally they’ll produce high-end cards with watercooling from Thermaltake, or other unique features such as their 3870 X2 TOP card with four DVI outputs.
For the HTPC crowd, ASUS’ Silent line of graphics cards have been serving the needs of enthusiasts looking for a silent graphics solution for nearly four years now. Their cards use heatpipe technology to accomplish this task. The EN9600 GT Silent is ASUS’ latest silent card offering, its V-Cool cooling unit is built around three heatpipes which work together to keep the GPU cool.
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You would barely notice the heatpipes at first glance though. This is because they are covered by a massive dual-slot heatsink, which helps to keep the heatpipes cool. ASUS actually uses an array of different heatsinks with varying densities to accomplish this mission.
The heatpipes themselves are largely cooled by the thin gray aluminum heatsinks that you see from the top of the card. ASUS uses dozens of thin fins, cramming them in together in order to increase the overall surface area of the entire heatsink. A large black heatsink adorned with the ASUS logo sits directly above the GPU. This heatsink has much thicker fins than the other heatsink array. ASUS even places fins on the edges of the heatsink to further increase the surface area of the heatsink. ASUS refers to these fins as V-fins.
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The entire system works passively – no fans are present on the graphics card, allowing it to run completely silent. There’s one caveat however – ASUS recommends that end users place a fan inside the system chassis in order to ensure good airflow running over the card. On their website, ASUS even goes so far as to suggest that the PC should be placed in an area with good ventilation for optimal results.
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Now technically none of these steps are required in order for the card to run properly, but it is recommended by ASUS. We recommend you’ve got good airflow within your case as well, although we wouldn’t be concerned about where you place your PC within your room, as long as you’ve got good airflow within your case you should be okay. So why is all this important? This is because heatpipes do such a good job of drawing heat off the graphics processor, they end up getting quite hot themselves. You wouldn’t want to touch a heatpipe when in use, as it could literally burn your finger! This heat needs to go somewhere, or else the air surronding the graphics card can get quite toasty, you’ll essentially create one huge hotspot within your case. If your case is adequately ventilated with cool air running over the graphics card, heat can be dissipated off the heatpipes and surrounding heatsinks more effectively than if your case was filled with stagnant air. You should also setup your system with an exhaust vent to blow any hot air outside of the PC case. ASUS technically has an exhaust vent located on the back of the EN9600 GT Silent, but since the card itself doesn’t have a fan, this exhaust vent is technically nonfunctional unless you go the extra mile and place a fan on or near the graphics card itself.
ASUS also elects not to cool the memory modules on the graphics card.
In terms of clocks, ASUS sticks with the reference GeForce 9600 GT specifications for their EN9600 GT Silent board.
| BFG GeForce 9600 GT OCX w/ThermoIntelligence | Page:: ( 3 / 14 ) |
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In more recent years though BFG’s OC cards have taken a backseat to some of the other factory OC’ed boards on the market when it comes to clock speeds – for a given GPU the clocks on BFG’s OC boards haven’t been nearly as high as some of the other cards on the market. Instead BFG has taken the same tiered approach to overclocking that is employed by other card manufacturers.
At the top of the lineup is BFG’s “OCX” cards. These boards boast the highest clock speeds BFG can muster, and sometimes ship with their sporty ThermoIntelligence coolers. If you recall, the last ThermoIntelligence board we reviewed -- BFG’s 8600 GT ThermoIntelligence -- took home our Editor’s Choice Award last year. Just below the OCX cards are their “OC2” boards. These cards are highly overclocked, but not quite as far as OCX cards. Usually OC2 boards stick with the stock NVIDIA reference cooling.
BFG’s “OC” cards are now their entry-level overclocked cards. Among their factory OC’ed cards, the OC boards ship with the mildest clocks BFG offers.
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This brings us to BFG’s GeForce 9600 GT OCX with ThermoIntelligence. As an OCX card, it features the highest clocks BFG offers. And with its ThermoIntelligence cooling, it’s got the best cooling BFG offers as well. In a nutshell, this is their flagship GeForce 9600 GT offering.
Like the ASUS Silent card, BFG’s ThermoIntelligence cooler relies on heatpipe technology to cool the GPU. In particular, BFG employs two copper heatpipes which encircle the G94 GPU. The heatpipes are then nickel-plated so they match the rest of the ThermoIntelligence cooling.
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Surrounding the heatpipes is an Orb-shaped aluminum heatsink. The heatsink is responsible for keeping the heatpipes cool, dispersing the heat off the heatpipes and into the air surrounding the graphics card. A fan which rests in the center of the cooler helps to accomplish this task.
According to BFG, their ThermoIntelligence cooler outperforms the stock NVIDIA reference design cooling unit by 18 degrees Celsius. We’ll be testing this figure out a little later in the performance testing section of this article. For added cooling performance, BFG also cools the memory modules and VRM circuitry with aluminum RAMsinks.
For added flair, BFG then finishes the ThermoIntelligence cooler off with a green LED.
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So how far is the 9600 GT OCX ThermoIntelligence overclocked? How does 725MHz core/1950MHz (effective) memory sound? These clocks are 75MHz on the GPU and 150MHz faster on the memory.
BFG backs the card up with their lifetime warranty and the card is also eligible for their Trade Up program. Within 100 days of purchase, the 9600 GT OCX ThermoIntelligence can be traded up to a higher-end graphics card, with the card owner getting the full value for their original card purchase. The card owner only pays the difference in price.
Hardware accessories inside the ThermoIntelligence box include one DVI adapter, a component video cable, and power adapter.
| ECS N9600GT-512MX-P | Page:: ( 4 / 14 ) |
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Because of this, ECS competes in other markets besides just motherboards. They also manufacture notebooks, and more recently they’ve made large strides in the video card space.
And ECS’ video cards are quite compelling. Rather than rely on NVIDIA’s stock cooling unit, ECS has partnered with the cooling pros at Arctic Cooling to integrate higher-performing aftermarket units for even better cooling than the stock GeForce cooler provides. The ECS N9600GT-512MX-P is one such card and we were quite impressed with it.
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The most distinguishing feature found on the ECS N9600GT-512MX-P is without a doubt its cooling, which is provided by Arctic Cooling’s Accelero S2.
In case you didn’t know, the Accelero S2 is one of the best aftermarket cooling units on the market right now. A few years ago we ran a comparison of the various VGA coolers on the market and found that the Accelero delivered better performance than cooling units from Zalman and Thermaltake.
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If you were to buy this cooler yourself and add it to your own GeForce 9600 GT card, the cooler itself would set you back about $20 at an online retailer such as Newegg, and then, depending on who manufactures your card, you may even risk voiding your card’s warranty.
So how does the Accelero S2 work? At the heart of the Accelero S2 are two 6.5mm thick copper heatpipes. The heatpipes are used to actively cool the GPU, and then run across the top of the entire graphics card. The heatpipes are nearly 9” in length, in fact, the heatpipes are so long, they extend beyond the top of the graphics card.
Once the heatpipes have pulled the heat off the GPU, the heat is then transferred to the air via a massive aluminum heatsink which consists of 30 fins. The heatsink is so large it will swallow the slot next to your graphics card, so you’ll have to keep it empty in order for the card to fit within your PC’s chassis.
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The cooler is completely fanless, so it generates no noise whatsoever. This makes the card ideal for users looking to build a silent-running PC. ECS then finishes the package off with 8 aluminum RAMsinks so that each individual memory module is passively cooled.
With its Accelero cooling, ECS’ N9600GT-512MX-P card is basically just begging to be overclocked. Fortunately ECS does just that, running the graphics core at 680MHz while the stream processors are clocked at 1728MHz. The board’s memory is then OC’ed to 925MHz. These speeds aren’t quite as high as some of the other manufacturers in this roundup, but that can easily be rectified if you want a little more performance. The card also ships with a DVI adapter, a component video cable, HDMI adapter, power cable, and the audio pass through cable.
| EVGA e-GeForce 9600 GT SSC | Page:: ( 5 / 14 ) |
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The e-GeForce 9600 GT SSC is EVGA’s flagship GeForce 9600 GT card, it boasts the fastest clocks they offer. Specifically the card is clocked at 740MHz on the GPU – nearly 100MHz higher than the stock GeForce 9600 GT – while its stream processors operate at 1850MHz. Finally, the card’s memory runs at 975MHz, a clock speed which is 75MHz higher than the stock GeForce 9600 GT reference specifications.
The card relies entirely on NVIDIA’s reference board design and cooling for the GeForce 9600 GT. Hardware-wise, EVGA makes no modifications to the design of the board itself. The reference cooler is the same one used on the GeForce 8800 GT, so it’s essentially overbuilt for the 9600 GT, which consumes less power and thus generates less heat than the 8800 GT. Here it’s important to note that the cooler is based on NVIDIA’s second-gen 8800 GT fan, and not the original fan that was notorious for running hot. The 2nd-gen fan is a little larger than the original, yet still operates at the same RPMs so noise output is similar.
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Besides the SSC, EVGA produces three additional GeForce 9600 GT SKUs.
Sitting just below the SSC is the e-GeForce 9600 GT with dual-slot cooling. This board is designed for enthusiasts who want even better cooling than the stock 9600 GT cooler and don’t mind giving up an expansion slot to accomplish this. EVGA actually produces two dual-slot 9600 GT cards, one with 512MB of memory and a second card with 1GB of memory. Both cards run at the stock GeForce 9600 GT speeds though, so technically the SSC is EVGA’s fastest 9600 GT variant, although obviously with dual-slot cooling the idea is that you could potentially OC these boards to SSC speeds, yet remain at lower temperatures. The SSC card actually sells for slightly less than EVGA’s dual-slot 9600 GT card right now, so if you crave performance, you may actually want to save a few bucks and get the SSC.
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While EVGA has bundled Crysis with many of their cards in the past, to keep costs down EVGA skips a game bundle for all of their GeForce 9600 GT boards. Hardware accessories bundled with the card include two DVI adapters, a component video cable, S-Video cable, and power cable.
| MSI N9600 GT Hybrid Freezer 1GB | Page:: ( 6 / 14 ) |
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With its factory OC’ed clock speeds and unique cooling, MSI’s N9600 GT Hybrid Freezer card is designed to appeal to gamers who crave maximum cooling and 3D performance, as well as the home theater PC crowd who wants a silent, or near silent rig for watching DVD and Blu-ray movies. The card’s most distinguishing feature is without a doubt its heatpipe cooling, MSI dubs it Hybrid Freezer
At the heart of Hybrid Freezer are four heatpipes. The heatpipes are made from copper and are responsible for drawing heat directly off the GPU. Each heatpipe is over 8” in length, and 6mm thick. MSI claims that their use of thicker heatpipes improves cooling effectiveness by 20% in comparison to typical 5mm thick heatpipes.
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Cooling the heatpipes is a conventional aluminum heatsink. Heat from the heatpipes is transferred to this heatsink, which is composed of multiple long fins to increase its surface area, and thus increase the effectiveness of the cooler even further. The heatsink is dual-slot, so you will need to leave the slot adjacent directly to your graphics slot empty in order for the N9600 GT card to fit inside your case.
The final piece of MSI’s Hybrid Freezer is its fan. MSI employs a low-RPM fan in order to keep noise levels down. Like the other manufacturers included in this roundup, MSI uses a variable speed fan that can adjust RPMs based on GPU temperature, so the card’s fan can spin up to higher RPMs as temps increase.
One unique tweak MSI makes to their cooling system though is that their fan is programmed to run at 0 RPMs during 2D operation. This means that when you’re running conventional applications at your Windows desktop such as your internet browser, spreadsheets, or typing up a document, the card’s fan will stop spinning completely. Instead the GPU is cooled entirely by the heatpipe/heatsink cooler. And obviously with the fan shut off completely, the card generates no noise.
The only real downside to the cooler is that the board’s memory modules aren’t cooled. Many of the other cards in this roundup have heatsinks cooling the memory modules.
In operation, MSI’s Hybrid Freezer cooling runs quite well. The cooler does a very good job of keeping the GPU cool, although we must admit, we never experienced the fan in action. Throughout the entire course of our testing, the card’s fan never spun up – this even includes looped runs of 3DMark Vantage!
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Besides the dual-slot cooler, MSI also overclocks the GPU on their Hybrid Freezer card for additional performance. The GPU on the N9600 GT Hybrid Freezer runs at 700MHz, an improvement of 50MHz over the stock 9600 GT, while the memory runs at 1.8GHz, which is the stock speed of the 9600 GT.
To further differentiate their Hybrid Freezer card from other 9600 GT offerings, MSI equips the board with 1GB of DDR3 memory, twice the amount as other manufacturers.
Of course, we’ve taken a look at 1GB cards in the past and found that none of today’s applications take advantage of the additional memory, but with games with large outdoor environments like Far Cry 2 right around the corner, it may pay to have 1GB of graphics memory in the near future. We’ll just have to wait and see.
MSI’s Hybrid Freezer card ships with an HDMI adapter, DVI adapter, power cable, S-Video cable, component video cable, and pass through cable.
| Palit GeForce 9600 GT Sonic | Page:: ( 7 / 14 ) |
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So what have they done for their GeForce 9600 GT card? Quite a bit is actually a serious understatement.
Rather than rely on the NVIDIA reference board design for the 9600 GT, Palit has come up with their own solution that’s more robust than what NVIDIA’s guidelines call for. For instance, Palit has come up with their own 3-phase power delivery system. The stock reference board design calls for 2-phase power. With one additional power phase, Palit is able to supply the GPU with clean power under the most extreme conditions (read: overclocking).
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But that’s not all. Palit has also designed their own custom cooling solution for the 9600 GT Sonic. Like many of the other cards in this roundup, the cooling subsystem of the Palit card relies on heatpipes to help keep the GPU cool. Palit has actually integrated dual copper heatpipes onto the 9600 GT Sonic. Palit then supports the heatpipes with an aluminum dual-slot heatsink cooling the heatpipes. Finally, the cooler is enclosed inside a plastic duct, which helps to vent air from the card’s fan out the sides of the graphics card, as well as a small vent which blows additional air outside your PC case.
The Sonic card also has a bevy of display outputs. Besides the obligatory two DVI ports that ship with all modern graphics cards, Palit also outfits their Sonic board with an HDMI port, DisplayPort output, and SPDIF input.
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Like many of the other manufacturers in this roundup, Palit overclocks their Sonic board for added performance. The graphics core on the Sonic card runs at 700MHz, while its stream processors run at 1750MHz. These speeds aren’t quite as high as some of the other manufacturers, but Palit makes up for this by clocking the board’s memory at an even 1.0GHz.
Palit also includes a game bundle with their Sonic card. Inside the box is Eidos’ Tomb Raider Anniversary on DVD-ROM. Other accessories bundled with the card include a DVI adapter, power cable, audio pass through cable, and an optical audio cable.
| XFX GeForce 9600 GT XXX | Page:: ( 8 / 14 ) |
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Let’s discuss XFX’s new cooler first.
Rather than employ NVIDIA’s stock GeForce 9600 GT cooler for their XXX card, XFX developed their own unique cooling solution. The beauty of XFX’s cooler is that it does a great job of cooling the G94 GPU while remaining single slot. Physically it reminds us of the cooler used 3 years ago on the GeForce 7800 GTX, only with copper cooling. The fan itself looks identical, although the heatsink is smaller than the one used on the 7800 GTX and lacks heat pipe cooling. The heatsink XFX uses is composed entirely of copper and features dozens of rolled fins.
Considering the number of GeForce 9600 GT cards with heat pipe cooling, it’s a bit surprising to see XFX get by with just a simple copper heatsink, but that’s exactly what they’ve done. XFX doesn’t use any exotic materials, yet their cooler seems to perform just as well if not better than some of the dual-slot coolers used by other manufacturers.
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Part of this may also be due to XFX’s additional PCB cooling, which is attached to the top of the XXX card. This is one unique feature XFX employs on their cards to help keep them cool. XFX’s PCB cooler is incredibly simple, XFX merely attaches a black aluminum plate to the top of the card. The plate runs the entire length of the card, and is designed to pull the heat of the card’s PCB, where it’s then dispersed into the air.
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For added flair, XFX adds a few additional touches to their XXX card. The card sports a black PCB with neon green DVIs. When combined with the custom copper cooling and the PCB cooler, the XXX card looks quite distinctive.
As a XXX card, the board is obviously clocked to the highest speeds XFX offers. In particular the board runs at 740MHz core while the memory runs at 1.0GHz. Like many of the other manufacturers, XFX runs the XXX board’s stream processors at 1850MHz.
Over the past few months, XFX has bundled their XXX card with two different games, Company of Heroes and, more recently, Call of Duty 4. (Our particular card shipped with CoD 4.) Besides the game, XFX also includes a do not disturb door tag, two DVI adapters, an HDMI adapter, pass through audio cable for HDMI, power adapter, S-Video cable, and component video cable.
| Zogis GeForce 9600 GT | Page:: ( 9 / 14 ) |
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Zogis is the final company we’ll be looking at today. Founded in January 2006, Zogis is technically considered a relative newcomer to the NVIDIA graphics business, but they’ve actually been in the graphics industry for quite some time. You see, Zogis is a satellite company owned by PowerColor. If you follow the ATI graphics business, you’ve probably heard of PowerColor, as they were one of ATI’s first board partners and are quite popular among ATI enthusiasts. In fact, over the years multiple PowerColor boards have taken home our Editor’s Choice and Bull’s Eye Awards.
Around the time Zogis was founded, NVIDIA’s G70 GPU had beat R520 to market, giving NVIDIA and their board partners a huge advantage over ATI and their own board partners, who were essentially forced to compete with slower X800 hardware. PowerColor was hit hard by this as they were an ATI exclusive board partner. Like ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, and others had done previously, PowerColor wanted to limit their exposure by selling cards from both ATI and NVIDIA, but they didn’t want to risk damaging their relationship with ATI, so they decided to quietly launch the Zogis brand.
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At the time it was quite a coup for NVIDIA, as they’d essentially landed one of ATI’s strongest board partners.
Sapphire now employs the same strategy with their “Zotac” brand of GeForce cards.
So that’s the story behind Zogis. Right now their products are based entirely on NVIDIA’s reference board design and cooling, so Zogis makes no changes to differentiate their GeForce cards from others.
Instead, they compete on price. Zogis’ cards are typically among the least expensive GeForce cards on the market for a given GPU. With GeForce prices constantly in flux nowadays, they aren’t necessarily the cheapest (especially when you factor in mail-in rebates), but they do tend to sell for less than some of the fancier boards with overclocked clock speeds or fancier cooling.
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The Zogis GeForce 9600 GT ships with one DVI adapter, a power adapter, S-Video cable, and a component video cable.
| System Setup | Page:: ( 10 / 14 ) |
Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770
EVGA nForce 790i Ultra SLI motherboard (for GeForce cards)
ASUS P5E3 Premium WiFi AP Edition (for Radeon cards)
4GB OCZ DDR3 @ 1333MHz
ASUS EN9600 GT Silent
BFG GeForce 9600 GT OCX
ECS N9600GT-512MX-P
EVGA e-GeForce 9600 GT SSC
MSI N9600 GT Hybrid Freezer
Palit GeForce 9600 GT Sonic
XFX GeForce 9600 GT XXX
Zogis GeForce 9600 GT
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB
ForceWare 175.16
300GB Western Digital Caviar SE
Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit w/Service Pack 1
Benchmarks
Company of Heroes 1.71
F.E.A.R. 1.08
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion 1.2
Call of Duty 4 1.4
Half-Life 2 Episode Two
Crysis 1.2
Lost Planet
Crysis 1.21
| Performance | Page:: ( 11 / 14 ) |
| Game Performance (cont’d) | Page:: ( 12 / 14 ) |
| Temps | Page:: ( 13 / 14 ) |
| Conclusion | Page:: ( 14 / 14 ) |
ASUS’ EN9600 GT Silent for instance is geared towards the HTPC crowd. For these users, silence is golden, so a card like the EN9600 GT Silent is perfect for them. It also doesn’t hurt that the card’s heat pipe cooling does a good job of keeping the G94 GPU cool.
With its Accelero S2 cooling, ECS’ N9600GT-512MX-P finishes a close second among the silent boards included in this roundup. Why second? Because the board tends to sell for more than the ASUS Silent card. If you want the absolute best cooling performance from a silent card though, this is the board to get, running five degrees cooler than the ASUS Silent.
MSI’s Hybrid Freezer board is somewhat similar in the sense that it generally runs silently as well – as we mentioned earlier, the card’s fan never spun up over the course of our testing, running at 0 RPMs at all times. The only downside is we observed higher operating temperatures in our testing. In addition, like the ECS card, MSI’s N9600 GT Hybrid Freezer currently sells for more than the ASUS EN9600 GT Silent.
With their higher clocks, the EVGA e-GeForce 9600 GT SSC and XFX GeForce 9600 GT boards are designed to appeal to performance enthusiasts who want the fastest GeForce 9600 GT card money can buy. Among the two, XFX’s board is more attractive due to its superior cooling and XFX’s decision to bundle the card with Call of Duty 4. CoD 4 was one of the best shooters of 2007, and is highly popular online. XFX also prices the board aggressively: on Newegg the XXX sells for just $10 more than the SSC. Considering that Call of Duty 4 is a $50 game, this is a tremendous value if you’re into first-person shooters but haven’t had a chance to pick up Infinity Ward’s latest shooter.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, the Zogis GeForce 9600 GT is targeted for the price conscious gamer looking for value.
The two boards that really stand out the most in this roundup in our opinion though are the BFG GeForce 9600 GT OCX and the Palit GeForce 9600 GT Sonic. Both cards have excellent cooling, with the BFG cooler slightly outperforming the Palit card as the best cooling of any card in this roundup. In addition, BFG also clocks their card higher than Palit. The only real drawback of the OCX board is its price; it currently sells for more money than some GeForce 8800 GT cards! Palit’s GeForce 9600 GT Sonic sells for less, and has cooling that’s nearly as good. In addition, Palit outfits the board with a dizzying around of display outputs. Sure, it isn’t clocked as high as some of the other boards in this roundup, but it also sells for considerably less than BFG’s GeForce 9600 GT OCX. Besides, if you’re willing to OC the board yourself, you can easily narrow the gap between the Sonic board and BFG’s 9600 GT OCX.
So there you have it, our take on eight different GeForce 9600 GT cards. Hopefully this article helped you in your search for the 9600 GT board that’s right for your needs. If you have any questions or concerns, as always drop a note in the comments for this article…