Zotac really seem to be on top of the graphics card releases. We only started seeing their products last year but they seemed to get the hang of making a good graphics card pretty fast. As with most companies they have their standard reference design card but they also have their funky overclocked models. Sure there are plenty of other manufacturers with oeverclocked models such as ASUS who have the TOP line-up of cards, while Palit have their Sonic line-up. But what makes Zotac stand out so much with their AMP! line-up is that the clocks they tend to put on these cards are very aggressive and really make it stand out from the competition with very stable operation. - TweakTown

Zotac GeForce 9600 GT 512MB AMP! Version Preview

The front of the box pretty much follows the same formula that we've seen over the past few months from Zotac. We see the brand at the top of the card with some NVIDIA logos and the model across the bottom. The right of the box shows us the card is an AMP! edition. We can also see some of the main features like 512MB of GDDR3 memory, PCI Express 2.0, dual link DVI and more. The back of the box mentions the brand and the fact that it's an AMP! edition again. We also have a bit of a blurb on the GeForce 9600 GT along with some more details of some of the features that the card has to offer.

With the box out the way it's time to move onto the card, which when looking at it instantly resembles a GeForce 8800 GT. We have the single slot cooler that manages to take up the whole front of the card with a largish fan sitting to the right. The cooler has a giant sticker that goes all the way across and mentions the brand and model along with the fact that it's an AMP! edition variant. The cooler really just reflects what we saw on the front of the box. We have a single PCI Express power connector that sits at the back of the card and as we move around to the top of the card we have a single SLI connector.

Zotac really manage to kick it up a notch with the AMP! edition of the GeForce 9600 GT. We saw in the Galaxy article that the GeForce 9600 GT was able to perform around the same as the Radeon HD 3870, sometimes a little slower and sometimes a little faster, but more often than not it seemed to struggle at the higher resolution. With the decent performance bump that Zotac has offered the card manages to almost consistently beat out the Radeon HD 3870. The good news is though, if you want to do a bit of overclocking yourself you should be able to get your card up to similar speeds of the Zotac.

While we again don't see the inclusion of a game in the package, it's not really a big deal. More often than not we see a game we don't really want in the package. What you get instead is a card that is able to stand out from the competition. We manage to see this over and over again from Zotac and it's why we've been so impressed with their products since the company launched. This is a really winning formula and it will probably be one of the fastest GeForce 9600 GT offerings we get our hands on. The only company that may bring something to compete with these speeds is ASUS with a TOP variation of the card.

If you're not interested in overclocking yourself and you can hunt down a GeForce 9600 GT AMP! edition from Zotac we would highly recommend it for people looking for a card that should come in at under $200. Zotac managed to take the GeForce 9600 GT up a notch with tye AMP! edition, which is a perfect card for people who want something fast out of the box.