The hype surrounding the new GeForce 9 series of graphics cards from NVIDIA hasn't seemed to have been as big as previous generation releases. The biggest reason for this seems to be that there have been so many graphics cards released over the past few months that this just seems like another one of them. The latest graphics card to make its way to the labs is the GeForce 9600 GT. Generally speaking, any form of mid-range card has never been that exciting really. Sure the GeForce 8600 GT and GTS weren't bad, but far from what you'd call exciting. What makes this one any more interesting? Well, word floating around is that the card is supposed to be quite the performer. - TweakTown

NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT (G94) 512MB Board Preview

It's been a while since we've seen a Galaxy graphics card, and the box has changed since the last time we saw anything from them. The box uses a blue and black setup with a very mean looking kitty in the center. Looking around the box it's a pretty standard affair, the top shows a multitude of logos along with the Galaxy logo to the right. The bottom mentions GeForce and the right shows a sticker that mentions Xtreme Tuner which is some overclocking software provided by Galaxy. Across the bottom we also have another sticker that mentions the model of the card, in this case is the GeForce 9600 GT version.

Turning the box over there isn't much more than just an array of information tid-bits that explain some of the other features available on the card. There is also a little box that lets you know what you need if you want to make use of SLI function. The package is alright, but a little on the light side. We had a peek at the overclocking software and it isn't too bad actually. The front of the card doesn't give us a whole lot to look at. Galaxy have opted to use their own design cooler which manages not only to take up the whole front of the card but also requiring two slots due to its extra thickness.

The whole card carries with it the presence of just about any higher end graphics card that we've seen from NVIDIA lately. Moving to the side of the card we have a single PCI Express power connector. Continuing around the card we get to the top where we see a single SLI connector. This should mean that the card doesn't support the new Tri-SLI technology available on the new nForce 780i based motherboards. The feature tends to only be seen with their top-end cards. There isn't really too much to the card. Length wise it comes in at the same size as a previously released GeForce 8800 GT graphics card.

While the new GeForce 8800 GT and GTS cards use the fairly recent G92 based core, the new GeForce 9600 GT offers an even more updated core code named G94. The card comes with 512MB of GDDR3 memory running on a 256-bit bus which is also seen on the GeForce 8800 GT. The standard GeForce 9600 GT will carry with it a clock setting of 650/1800MHz with a shader running at 1650MHz. This overclocked variant from Galaxy carries with it 675/2000MHz and a shader of 1625MHz. We can see the chip is based on 65nm technology, and has 64 unified shaders coupled with 4 raster operation units.

The GeForce 9600 GT doesn't disappoint at all. Performance is better than you would expect and if pricing is going to be as competitive as we've heard then this could be the next generation card to own. It could be a really good chance for GeForce 7900 users to finally jump to a cheap DirectX 10 card that is actually capable of running DirectX 10 games at a playable frame rate. Pricing should come under the Radeon HD 3870 and well under the GeForce 8800 GT. While the card tends to perform on par with the Radeon HD 3870, sometimes better and sometimes slightly worse.

We have to also remember that this is an overclocked GeForce 9600 GT and not a stock clocked one. With that said though, it's not overclocked majorly. We actually have an overclocked Zotac in the labs at the moment which carries with it some very nice clocks, and there's no doubt it's going to be interesting to see when we climb beyond 700MHz on the core. Come launch day the GeForce 9600 GT is probably going to be an extremely popular product. Like we mentioned before, GeForce 7900 users have been so happy with their cards that they really want to stay with an NVIDIA offering.

The card should come in with some competitive pricing and plenty of stock to boot. If you bought a Radeon HD 3870 recently we wouldn't be disappointed with your purchase. If we were a computer company on the other hand with a lot of Radeon HD 3870's in stock we would be a little worried, as like we said before, while the Radeon HD 3870 isn't a bad card people tend to feel very comfortable with NVIDIA these days, and there's a good reason for that as they continue to release quality product after quality product.