XFX always had nice treats to offer, and its GeForce line-up was always packed with super fast cards. Overclocking is not only a thing for enthusiasts and those who increase speeds to see what their hardware can take. Many would surely like that, but there's always a risk of damaging your card. XFX realized that most users don't know how to overclock their graphics board, and that finding the optimum speed where the card will run stable but provide noticeable performance gain is not easy at all. Though this time XFX has taken that out of your hands by providing an already overclocked version. So today, we check out their GeForce 9600 GSO XXX edition, the fastest one in its series. - FudZilla

XFX GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB TripleX Board Review

High frequencies can damage hardware, something not covered by warranties. If you're not a fan of overclocking but reference graphics card just don't feed your hunger, then you'll be better off buying a factory overclocked card. At the same time, you don't have to worry about potential breakdowns, as the company will have to fix or replace your card if it breaks down. It's also important to note that XFX is one of the rare partners that offers such overclocked GeForce 9600 GSO graphics cards. And the GeForce 9600 GSO is based on the GeForce 8800 GT design. Actually, it is the GeForce 8800 GS video card with a new name.

After the GeForce 9600 GT cards prices went down, the GeForce 9600 GSO turned out to be less desirable as it's slower and priced only a bit lower than the GeForce 9600 GT. Compared to the GeForce 9600 GT, the GSO features lower clocks and less memory at your disposal, coupled with a weaker memory bus. Luckily, XFX gave these cards new life as it overclocked them to 680MHz. This means that it now features clocks higher than the GeForce 9600 GT, and XFX also includes a gift game with Company of Heroes. The G92 graphics core used is built in 65nm and has 96 stream processors, with unified shader technology.

Although the GeForce 9600 GSO has more stream processors than the GeForce 9600 GT, it features a weaker 192-bit memory bus compared to the 256-bit one on the GeForce 9600 GT board. An important piece of the graphics pipeline is the number of raster units, where the GSO features four units less. XFX's heavily overclocked GeForce 9600 GSO, apart from the 130MHz faster core, has shader processors running at 1700MHz and the memory at 1900MHz effective. And XFX recommends a power supply of minimum 500W, but a quality 450W should be sufficient. Using two cards in SLI mode you'll definitely need an additional 100W.

The XFX GeForce 9600 GSO XXX edition is a very fast GSO graphics board, and probably the fastest one in its series. It does run 130MHz faster than reference GeForce 9600 GSO and such a difference clearly had an impact on results. We see that XFX's card is much faster than the reference, and it even performs close to the GeForce 9600 GT version. If you're planning on buying a gaming card, and your budget is limited, this is a card that you must consider. It is an alternative to the GeForce 9600 GT especially as the XFX version is highly overclocked, and it clearly stands out against non overclocked graphics card.

The ATI Radeon HD 4830 ends up faster most of the time but it is a bit more expensive. It is a tough call to find the right card in under $100 but one thing is clear, XFX's overclocked GeForce 9600 GSO will be enough to play most of the games but the choice is as always yours.