Last week NVIDIA launched their first GeForce 9 series card. It is based on the new G94 core which uses the same architecture as the G92, it actually is a G92 with less shaders inside the die. The actual number of shaders is 64, versus 128 on the G92. This helps bring down the transistor count and die size, resulting in a manufacturing cost reduction. The Biostar GeForce 9600 GT we have in our hands today follows the NVIDIA reference design to the letter. It even uses the NVIDIA silver stripe reference cooler design. Other manufacturers put their own stickers on the cooler. We expect Biostar to do the same soon, once they have a bit of time while selling the first batch. - techPowerUp!

Biostar GeForce 9600 GT 512MB Video Board Review

A sexy Elf like girl poses on the front of the package. The shiny metal like print looks extremely nice and much better than the packaging that we saw on the Biostar GeForce 8600 GTS. On the back you find a basic run down of the major specifications and features but nothing as detailed as clock speeds. Just like the NVIDIA reference design, Biostar uses a single slot cooling solution. The only change is the Biostar sticker sitting on the fan hub. The GPU has also support for DisplayPort, board manufacturers can choose whether they want to replace one DVI port with a DisplayPort, or just keep the two DVI ports.

The cooler is the average cooling assembly using a copper baseplate and an array of fins made from aluminum. The card does not exhaust hot air outside of the case, but this is not a big problem with the fairly low heat output of the card. This card is compatible with SLI and can be paired with any other GeForce 9600 GT card. The power connector on the back is required to supply power to the card. It is also required when running in PCI Express 2.0 mode, which would be able to supply all power over the bus. It comes with Samsung chips rated at 1.0ns latency rated at 2000MHz effective but able to overclock if wanted.

To find the maximum overclock of our card we used a combination of RivaTuner, ATITool and our benchmarking suite. In order to enable overclocking of the G94 cards using RivaTuner a small modification is required on the config files. In the end the final overclocks of our card are 787MHz core and 2164MHz memory. Those are some very impressive numbers, especially when you consider that the Zotac AMP! edition overclocking card managed only 740MHz. Biostar will sell their GeForce 9600 GT in line with similar offerings from other companies. The price will be around $199, probably lower but depends a bit on the demand.

Biostar's new GeForce 9600 GT graphics card holds no surprises. It follows the NVIDIA reference design, resulting in a stable and powerful card. Over time we are sure Biostar will find ways to diversify their product from the competition. With all the hype around the new GeForce 9 series it makes sense to be able to ship the product as fast as possible without losing time by design changes. Even though there are no major technical advancements in the G92 GPU, which powers the first member of the GeForce 9 family, the card is a great milestone when compared to the GeForce 8600 GTS, where the performance doubled.

Even though there is a bit of tweaking potential left in the fan control, nobody has to be afraid of getting a leaf blower card. We were amazed by the overclocking potential that our Biostar GeForce 9600 GT sample offered. Both the core and memory could be overclocked decently over the NVIDIA reference frequencies, leaving more expensive pre-overclocked cards behind. Unfortunately the included acessories are the absolute minimum required.