While the GeForce 9800 series of video cards from NVIDIA might be the talk of the town at the moment, there's no denying that the GeForce 9600 GT is more in line with most people's budgets when it comes to buying a graphics card. The latest GeForce 9600 GT to make its way into the labs comes in the form of a Foxconn which manages to carry quite a hefty overclock on its stock cooler. We've seen a lot of GeForce 9600 GT's come through, and most have managed to show us something that has impressed or at least pleasantly surprised us with their performance. Today we will see if Foxconn can keep up with the tough competition and show us something that gets us a little excited. - TweakTown

Foxconn GeForce 9600 GT OC Graphics Card Review

Foxconn have moved over to a new package design that looks great. The big emphasis from Foxconn at the moment is awards and just how many they have achieved in such a short time. Apart from this though, we see the brand across the top with the normal lineup of NVIDIA logo's along with the model across the bottom. The only other things to mention on the front of the box are the fact that it states that 512MB of GDDR3 memory is on the card and that this model is an overclocked one. Turning the box over, we have a list of more awards along with some information on some of the technology implemented into the graphics card.

While we are used to seeing lots of bright colors from our Foxconn cards, this one's a bit dull and boring to look at. The stock heatsink covers the whole card with the brand and model written on the cooler and a brown curve like object to the right of the card. Looking around the card there isn't too much too see that we haven't seen before. The back gives us a single PCI Express connector that is required while the top gives us a single SLI connector if you want to put two of these bad boys together. As you would expect with any reference based card, it also is very standard with two dual link DVI connectors being found.

Of course, with the card using the stock cooler it's only a single slot design which is something we haven't seen a lot of with the GeForce 9600 GT since most companies seemed to have gone down the aftermarket route. The core has been bumped to 700MHz which takes the shader clock to 1750MHz and the memory running at a very healthy 2000MHz effective. This card as far as clocks go is up there with some of the big overclocked cards like the Sonic from Palit, but it manages to keep the single slot design which a lot of people are going to be happy with. Taking up less space is in the end always a good point.

We are quite a fan of the GeForce 9600 GT from Foxconn for the plain fact that you get these meaty out of the box clocks without having to move to a big dual slot solution. The only other GeForce 9600 GT that we've seen offer this kind of setup is the AMP! edition from Zotac which impressed us as well. The only real problem with the GeForce 9600 GT is trying to find the thing. It doesn't seem to pop up on our local price search engines and the only place that seems to stock it in the states is Newegg somehow. The package is a bit bland and boring, but when comparing to other brands in the states the price is pretty competitive.

Foxconn seem to be pretty serious about the graphics card market these days, and the same can be said about the motherboard market as well with some very impressive boards being displayed at trade shows around the world. The only real grip with the card is the lack of color that we normally see from Foxconn cards. Hopefully this plain design doesn't stay around for long and we go back to the funky colors. However, even without these the card is excellent value for people who are able to get their hands on it.