With the flurry of GeForce 9600 GT's hitting the streets, there really are a lot of different video cards to consider. If you've been pondering an upgrade, don't fret. Many of the new GeForce 9600 GT's are based on the reference video card, and this makes it really simple to comparison shop by price alone. A few models are pre-overclocked above the stock GPU and memory clock speeds, while others are based on custom PCB designs that accommodate a physical HDMI port at the back of the card. Of what's available, the choice basically boils down to GeForce 9600 GT for gaming, or a GeForce 9600 GT that's a little better suited to for home theatre applications. - PCStats

Foxconn GeForce 9600 GT 512MB OC Edition Review

As to pre-overclocked or stock clocked video cards, the GeForce 9600 GT is pretty forgiving so we think both options are equally valid. If you don't want to bother overclocking yourself, aim for a pre-overclocked video card like the Foxconn GeForce 9600 GT OC edition. This baby is a single slot reference video card which has been pre-overclocked at the factory. Foxconn's GeForce 9600 GT retails for about $195 and comes with bare minimum. We think most consumers would agree that it's better to pay less than have a couple bundled video games thrown in. And Foxconn has overclocked their version from the stock speeds.

The GPU runs an extra 50MHz quicker, the memory is up 100MHz, and the shader clock runs 125MHz faster. There's a lot to like about a mainstream video card like the GeForce 9600 GT, and it'll be interesting to see how much further we can overclock this particular Foxconn card. Foxconn's GeForce 9600 GT OC edition is equipped with 512MB of GDDR3 memory, is DirectX 10 and Shader Model 4.0 compliant, supports SLI, and is fully PCI Express 2.0 and HDCP compliant. The Foxconn GeForce 9600 GT is based on the NVIDIA reference card layout and uses the stock single slot thermal solution.

The default clock speeds are 650MHz GPU, 1800MHz memory and 1625MHz shader. The Foxconn version is pre-overclocked from the factory. Its clock speeds are 700MHz GPU, 2000MHz memory, and 1750MHz shader. Starting with the GeForce 9600 GT GPU first, we will be overclocking with the help of the nTune software. The G94 core should be able to overclock quite well, and in fact we ware able to reach 755MHz fully stable with no artifacts. We next turned our attention to overclocking the 512MB of GDDR3 memory. The memory speed we could reach was 2328MHz, the best overclock we have seen so far.

The Foxconn GeForce 9600 GT OC version is a great mainstream video card with overclocking potential and this can also be said about virtually every reference GeForce 9600 GT out there. If you're craving DirectX 10 gaming goodness and a video card that can handle all the eye candy, the NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT certainly delivers. For it's class, the GeForce 9600 GT offers great gaming results, and comes with an affordable sticker price of $195. Noise wasn't much of an issue, but the fan is certainly audible when the video card's under heavy 3D load, the main advantage remains the single slot cooling solution.

The Foxconn GeForce 9600 GT OC edition has that capability, and comes with a component output breakout box to that effect. An HDMI adaptor would have been icing on the cake. On the strength of its overclockability, and price, the pre-overclocked Foxconn GeForce 9600 GT OC version graphics card is a great reference based GeForce 9600 GT worthy of your consideration.