Biostar, Club 3D, MSI, ZOTAC and others all-in for GeForce 9 series
NVIDIA's partners were lined up and waiting today, armed with their 9600 GT offerings based on NVIDIA's new next-generation GPU.
There are quite simply too many to choose from, so we'll be listing just some of those available and to make it fair to the manufacturers (well, as fair as possible), we'll be listing them in alphabetical order. Sorry ZOTAC.
BFG
We'll get the party started with BFG's overclocked 9600 GT OC - no prizes for guessing what the OC stands for. It is however a fairly mild overclock, it bumps the GPU clock from the standard 650MHz up to 675MHz and raises the shader clock from 1625MHz to 1700MHz. It carries a suggested US retail price of $229.99 and John Malley, senior director of marketing for BFG Technologies, says:
"The BFG NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT OC offers users a great performing card at an affordable price. Providing advanced features and benefits, such as support for Microsoft DirectX 10, high-definition resolutions, and enhanced Blu-Ray Disc video playback, the NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT OC from BFG puts immersive gaming and amazing graphics within the reach and budget of PC gamers everywhere."
Official press release: BFG TECHNOLOGIES ANNOUNCES NVIDIA GEFORCE 9600 GT OC 512MB GRAPHICS CARD
Biostar
Biostar opted to play it safe and chose not to overclock its first 9600 GT, which it has named the V9603GT52 - probably so it's easy to remember, right? Despite its standard core clock of 650MHz, Biostar of course say "the performance is one of the best in the world".
Official press release: BIOSTAR Launches Big On Performance V9603GT52
Club 3D
Netherlands-based Club 3D claims its "9600 GT is designed for exceptional high 3D performance for its price". Club 3D's offering provides a standard GPU clock speed of 650MHz and 512MBs of GDDR3 memory which clocks at 1800MHz. Its Dual Link DVI outputs can power two LCD panels with resolutions up to 2560x1600.
Official press release: Club 3D 9600 GT 512MB
MSI
There's no stopping MSI, it hasn't just launched one 9600 GT card, it has three! First up, its N9600GT-T2D512-OC which carries the standard 512MBs of RAM and is overclocked with a 700MHz core, 1900MHz memory clock and a 1750MHz shader clock. It comes complete with MSI's newly designed "Seaweed-blade" cooler.
Second in MSI's 9600 GT range is its MSI N9600GT-T2D1G-OC. This one carries all the same clock speeds as the T2D512-OC above, but it has a total of 1GBs worth of memory.
Completing the MSI trio is the MSI N9600GT ZILENT 1G, yes, that's Zilent, not Silent. Why? Well, this one has the same overclocked speeds, 1GB of memory and a Zalman VF1050 Cooler. No pricing on this third one yet but the T2D512-OC and T2D1G-OC are both available from Scan.co.uk, priced at £152.70 and £187.95 respectively.
Official press release: MSI N9600GT Series graphic cards
Palit
Palit has taken an entirely different approach to the rest of the field. It's aiming to be the most flexible by declaring itself "the world’s first graphics card to simultaneously support DisplayPort, HDMI, and two Dual-Link DVI display outputs". That's right, you can connect it to everything but the kitchen sink, just be prepared to sacrifice two PCI slots for the privilege.
The Palit 9600 GT Sonic also gets the overclocking treatment, it features a 700MHz core speed, 64 stream processors with 1750MHz shader clock and 512MB 256bit 2000MHz GDDR3 memory.
Official press release: The 3D Graphics Solution for the Future – Palit GeForce™ 9600GT Sonic Supports Four Display Outputs!
Vvikoo
The not-yet-common Paris-based manufacturer, Vvikoo, launched its 9600 GT offerings in two flavours; a GeForce 9600 GT and a GeForce 9600 GT Turbo. The more interesting Turbo card has a GPU pre-overclocked at 700MHz and its memory gets similar treatment at 2000MHz.
Helping keep the Turbo cool is a quadruple heat-pipe cooler from Zalman, previously used on Vvikoo's GeForce 8800GT MAX.
Official press release: VVIKOO launches its GeForce 9600GT Turbo graphics card
ZOTAC
Wrapping things up is ZOTAC, who has a GeForce 9600 GT and a GeForce 9600 GT AMP! Edition in store for us. The AMP! Edition offers the highest core clock speed out of all the 9600 GTs we have listed here, tipping the scales at 725MHz. Read all about it, and see how it performs, in our ZOTAC GeForce 9600 GT AMP! Edition review.
Official press release: ZOTAC Announces GeForce 9600GT-based Graphics Cards
That's all folks, just a selection of what has landed today on the 9600 GT front. If they take your fancy, online retailer Scan.co.uk already has some of these and other 9600 GTs in stock.
Related reading:
ZOTAC GeForce 9600 GT AMP! Edition: the new mid-range contender
NVIDIA kicks off GeForce 9 series: declares it the largest single-generation performance jump in the company’s history
