Leadtek honored us today to check out a brand new, just released, GeForce 9 series card, more specifically the WinFast PX9600 GT Extreme. One thought popped into our mind when we heard we were going to be looking at this, why are they releasing a GeForce 9600 series card first and not a GeForce 9800 series like all the previous releases, as in the GeForce 8800? Our opinion is that they have there eyes set and ears open to the people out there that aren't enthusiasts but are instead weekend gamers that can't afford the enthusiast cards or don't want to pull multiple one hundred dollar bills out of there wallets, or purses. Join me as we take a closer look at the brand new card from Leadtek. - Bjorn3D

Leadtek WinFast PX9600 GT Extreme Version Review

The first thing we noticed in comparing the WinFast PX9600 GT to the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT was the various specifications. They were the same in a lot of respects but then also different. The stream processors were almost cut in half on the WinFast PX9600 GT, where as, the shader clock was increased. Leadtek overclocked this card to make it a little more peppy and is also why the Extreme suffix is in the name of the card. Adding 120MHz to the clock rate is good. We will see if we can punch through that in the overclocking section. This has to do with the G94 chipset that they are using.

In a lot of ways the G94 is the G92. They are both manufactured on the 65nm process. It has 16 raster operating units split into four partitions of four, which translates to the G94 having the same 256-bit memory interface. The WinFast PX9600 GT also has the same PureVideo HD engine as the G92. The good news is that with the ForceWare 174.12 driver version both the G92 and G94 can take advantage of some new features like, Dynamic Blue, Green and Skin Tone Enhancements, and Dynamic Contrast Enhancement. It of course is a DirectX 10 compliant with full Shader Model 4.0 and OpenGL 2.1 support.

The driver also adds support for dual-stream decoding. This dual streaming, just like it sounds, allows the card to accelerate two video streams at the same time. Leadtek has always been a proponent of putting the accessories in the box that are going to matter. This time was no different. The box it came in was large enough for the items inside but not too large for them to flail around inside the box. Props to Leadtek for not wasting cardboard. The Leadtek WinFast PX9600 GT Extreme has the same PCB layout as the GeForce 8800 GT. It looks like the heatsinks will fit each other, so meaning they should be interchangeable.

Leadtek decided to make their move to overclock the video card from 650MHz core bus to 720MHz and they called it Extreme. We wondered how much further could it really go. After four hours of testing and tweaking we came to a point that we did not want to pass. In fact the temperature plays a quite large part in overclocking. Overclock a card too high and it may over heat and stop working. The highest core bus speed reached was 790MHz, and the memory clock speed reached was 1940MHz. Overall, this was a very successful overclock. Not only has the manufacturer overclocked it, but we were able to go even farther.

There are basically two ways to look at this card, price and performance. It does have some bang for the buck but not much compared to a GeForce 8800 GT with 512MB of memory. Expect to pay anywhere from $170 to $200 for the Leadtek WinFast PX9600 GT Extreme or pay $200 to $250 for an GeForce 8800 GT that has higher specifications. It is pretty much up to you as to what you can afford. The card in our opinion performed exceedingly well for a mid-range graphics card. It was easy to overclock and there may still be some drive left in overclocking it, especially if a aftermarket heatsink and fan was bought for it.

Much testing was done with the WinFast PX9600 from Leadtek and we are happy to say it exceeded our expectations. The bundle that came with the card has everything you need to watch movies, play games, hook up to projectors or other monitors and even comes with a free game. Leave it to Leadtek to come up with a good all around package. The card stands up well against the GeForce 8800 GT for what it is. If you don't have the money to spend on the GeForce 8800 GT we recommend the Leadtek Winfast PX9600 GT Extreme as it will suit most of your needs.