If you're looking for a GeForce 9600 GT card, the chances are we can give you a pretty good idea of which one to get. We get a lot of samples, but the GeForce 9600 GT would have to be one product that we've received over and over again from different companies who are mixing it up with big clocks and bigger coolers. The latest GeForce 9600 GT to make its way into the labs is from ASUS and carries with it some stock clocks, but also has a mean looking cooler that we've seen before. We've been happy with the GeForce 9600 GT series ever since its interception, and it's managed to receive a number of awards. Let's see if ASUS can impress us with their incarnation of the card. - TweakTown

ASUS GeForce 9600 GT 512MB Graphics Card Review

Like most mid-range ASUS offerings, we find ourselves with a more normal sized box. It's a pretty standard line-up with the brand mentioned across the top and the model mentioned across the bottom. We can also see the HDMI logo to the right of the box. We can also see that the card comes with 512MB of GDDR3 memory, offers HDCP compliancy, comes with GamerOSD and of course has full support for PCI Express 2.0. Moving over to the back we find ourselves with a bit of information on the various exclusive applications that are included in the ASUS package along with some of the features and the system requirements.

With the box out the way it's time to check out the card, and clearly the stand out point is the giant cooler that sits in the middle of the card. While there are no memory sinks we can see that the fan covers most of the memory, and with the fin design the air will get pushed over the memory without any issues. It might not look like it but the cooler is a dual slot one, so just make note of that if you are expecting a single slot card. The back gives us a single PCI Express power connector while the top of the card gives us an SLI connector for if you are thinking about getting two of these graphics cards.

The ASUS GeForce 9600 GT doesn't ultimately stand out, but does offer a lot of little advantages. For starters, we find ourselves with a 3 year warranty on their card versus the 2 year warranty that a lot of other companies offer. While the aftermarket cooler is a little louder than the reference cooler, it's not something that you would really notice and it does manage to give us roughly a ten percent drop in temperature. Of course, this comes at the cost of the card being dual slot which isn't uncommon for most aftermarket coolers. The package doesn't offer the normal ASUS goodies that we've come to expect of these high-end cards.

If you're looking for a solid GeForce 9600 GT and you don't mind going down the double slot route then the ASUS GeForce 9600 GT is probably a card worth keeping an eye out for. If you feel like spending a little bit more money though, you can go down the TOP route and get yourself a pre-overclocked card out of the box. With that said though, if you wanted to download something like RivaTuner you shouldn't have any trouble overclocking the card to the standard 700MHz core and 2000MHz memory clock that we see on some of the higher clocked GeForce 9600 GT cards like the VVikoo we saw today.