One gigabyte of GDDR3 memory is not reserved only for the high-end enthusiast cards. Palit have introduced an affordable GeForce 9600 GT card that has just that, a full 1GB of GDDR3 memory onboard. What's more this card features an overclocked core running at 700MHz, while the memory chips run at a speedy 2000MHz. We will put the Palit GeForce 9600 GT Sonic through its paces. A flurry of video cards have been released in the last few weeks. Some mind boggling assortment ranging within the GeForce GTX 200 series and the Radeon HD 4800 series. However, the video card we will be looking at today from Palit multimedia is the slightly older variant the GeForce 9600 GT. - CPU3D

Palit GeForce 9600 GT 1GB Sonic Video Card Review

The Palit GeForce 9600 GT graphics card utilizes the NVIDIA G94 graphics processor, which is essentially a scaled down G92 GPU with half the cores disabled. Palit bucks the norm here though by using 1024MB frame buffer versus the stock 512MB found on most GeForce 9600 GT's. And of course, the card is fully PCI Express 2.0 compliant. The Palit GeForce 9600 GT Sonic is factory overclocked, the stock clocks are 650/1800MHz, the Sonic version is clocked at 700/2000MHz through a 256-bit memory interface. Also, the card features 64 stream processors operating at 1750MHz shader clock speed.

On the front of the GeForce 9600 GT box we have the Palit frog adorned on a metallic themed box. Its very well done and an eye catcher. If you flip the box over you will find a brief specification table in several languages. The GeForce 9600 GT comes packed securely. The video card is packaged in a separate cardboard box sleeved in bubble wrap, with a portion of foam between the bubble wrap and the box. The Sonic version is covered with a plastic dual slot shroud, that also plays host to Palit's frog graphics. The Shroud is well ventilated and should aid in distributing air over the components of the graphics card.

It's hard not to appreciate the Palit GeForce 9600 GT 1GB Sonic video card. Palit went out of their way to customize this card far beyond the resemblance of a reference GeForce 9600 GT and clocked it at 700/2000MHz respectively. However, Palit didn't stop there, as they attached an aftermarket cooling solution that is more than adequate to deal with the increased thermal output. Then you have the 1GB frame buffer. While we didn't see much of an improvement in the synthetic tests, we did take note on some apparent performance advantages, in real world game environments at higher resolutions.

Looking at this video card, we really like the fact that the it's an overclocked version. What's even more appealing is the fact that it has 1GB of GDDR3 memory onboard, which means you will be able to run super high resolutions with no problems at all. But we think, best of all it's the price of the Palit GeForce 9600 GT 1GB Sonic edition. Costing around $170, it's an absoulte bargain.