The mid-range market for discrete graphics cards received an unexpected jolt with the arrival of the ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphics card. Previously, NVIDIA low to mid-range GPU's, the GeForce 9600 GT and the GeForce 8800 GT took on the Radeon HD 3850 and the Radeon HD 3870 in this crucial sector, generally winning the benchmark battle but losing out on multimedia capabilities. The Radeon HD 4850's arrival, at $199, has put pressure back on NVIDIA to reduce pricing on its GeForce 9800 GTX, further squeezing the cards directly below it in the pecking order. Inno3D has tried to do just that with a special edition GeForce 9600 GT. Say hello to the install it yourself ZEROtherm Hurricane model. - Hexus

Inno3D GeForce 9600 GT ZEROtherm Cooling Review

The GeForce 9600 GT is yet another derivative of the GeForce 8800 GTX technology. Based on the unified shading architecture approach that the G80 brought along with it to the desktop market, the 65nm based reference GeForce 9600 GT packs in 64 stream processors clocked in at 1625MHz, a GPU clock of 625MHz, and usually, GDDR3 memory operating at an effective 1800MHz via a 256-bit bus. The GeForce 9600 GT version, though, is the recipient of additional per clock performance tweaks that should help keep its performance strong, given the comparative lack of on-paper muscle.

Inno3D retails six regular GeForce 9600 GT products and this premium iChiLL model. Varying clocks and cooling, there's a model suited for most budgets and needs from silence to performance. The bare GeForce 9600 GT is testament to the state in which Inno3D ships the board. The ZEROtherm cooler needs to be attached by the end-user. The iChiLL model's BIOS is pre-programmed with overclocked frequencies of 720MHz core and 1940MHz memory. Disappointingly, the shader clock remains the same, at 1625MHz. Hynix is the source for the eight memory modules that make up the card's 512MB frame buffer.

Very much in the vein of Inno3D's partnership with Arctic Cooling for a variety of heatsink and/or fan units for overclocked and passively cooled cards, the Hong Kong based outfit has now turned to ZEROtherm for some aftermarket cooling collaboration. Specifically, the Hurricane HC92 Cu is cooler of choice, and it's an intriguing one. It's a three in one design that can be run either passively, what's termed an aero dynamic mode, where the fan speed is modulated according to temperature, and finally overclock, where it runs at full speed. And of course you will have to install the cooler edition of your choice.

And a partner really needs to invest in careful consideration before bumping an aftermarket cooler on a particular GPU. Pick the wrong one and no matter how good the cooler or bundle, the underlying GPU doesn't cut it with the one priced above, and that price is often times more than absorbed by the inclusion of a fancy cooler. This is the situation we find ourselves in with the Inno3D iChiLL 9600 GT Hurricane. The heatsink is excellent, from both performance and aural viewpoints, but it pushes the bundle price up to around $189, which is more than the GeForce 8800 GT and close to ATI's Radeon HD 4850 money.

Both products are properly derived from a high-end heritage and are as such thus significantly better performers. Some of the performance gap could have been mitigated by overclocking the 64 shaders yet, for some inexplicable reason, Inno3D has failed to do so. We'd have looked upon it with greater favour had it shipped with passthrough HDMI and DisplayPort support. There's still a lot to like about the product but recommendations are hard to come by when your own catalogue has faster products for less etail money. But it does add an extra choice to the product range and some do it yourself guys will surely like it.

The Hurricane cooler makes more sense on the GeForce 8800 GT, which is also etailed by Inno3D, and we'd look towards that if huge-ass cooling tickles you fancy. Punching below its burdensome financial weight, the three slot taking Inno3D iChiLL 9600 GT Hurricane version is found wanting when price is taken into account.