What do you get when you cross a GeForce 9600 GT PCB with an aftermarket cooler?

Review: What do you get when you cross a GeForce 9600 GT PCB with an aftermarket cooler?

Final thoughts

An AIB 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 oftentimes 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 - comprehensive as it is - up to around £115, which is more than GeForce 8800 GT and close to ATI Radeon HD 4850 money. Both SKUs are properly derived from a high-end heritage and are thus significantly better performers.

Some of the performance gap could have been mitigated by overclocking the 64 SPs (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, for the hell of it, DisplayPort support.

There's still a lot to like about the product but, really, recommendations are hard to come by when your own catalogue has faster SKUs for less etail money.

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.

Bottom line: punching below its burdensome financial weight, the three-slot-taking Inno3D iChiLL 9600 GT Hurricane is found wanting when price is taken into account.

HEXUS.certification

Inno3D iChiLL 9600 GT ZEROtherm Hurricane

HEXUS Where2Buy

The card is currently available for £115 here.

HEXUS Right2Reply

HEXUS invites manufacturers to comment on our review's findings. If any Inno3D's representatives wish to do so, their HEXUS Right2Reply will be written here, verbatim.

HEXUS related reading

Login with Forum Account

Don't have an account? Register today!

9600GT doesn't really have a market anymore now that the 4850 is here. Inno are too late with this into the market. Only thing going is the cooler. If this was maybe <£90 then its a real options, but £10 cheaper than the 4850!! I Know which one I would go for.

Totally.
Reading that article though it did occur to me - there are other architectural changes to the 9600GT that enable 64 SP's to keep up (nearly) with 112 of it's older siblings - so why hasnt nVidia released an updated 8800GT with these architectural changes?

I was wondering if the 9800's had this, but most people view them as rebadged 8800GTX's with power saving stuff added.

Is this right?

MSIC
Totally.
Reading that article though it did occur to me - there are other architectural changes to the 9600GT that enable 64 SP's to keep up (nearly) with 112 of it's older siblings - so why hasnt nVidia released an updated 8800GT with these architectural changes?

I was wondering if the 9800's had this, but most people view them as rebadged 8800GTX's with power saving stuff added.

Is this right?

It is the 9800GTX. They don't have much in common with the 8800GTX (and you see some differences in the performance profiles across games too).

Oh, ok then. So why isnt the 9800GTX miles and miles better than an 8800GTX?
Is it because of the memory bandwidth stuff?

huge-ass cooling tickles your fancy.

WOOOO!!! I found a mistake in the usually perfect hexus writings!!!

:rockon2:

I love you guys :P

Review: What do you get when you cross a GeForce 9600 GT PCB with an aftermarket cooler?

Final thoughts

HEXUS.certification

HEXUS Where2Buy

HEXUS Right2Reply

Related Reading

HEXUS Forums :: 7 Comments

Login with Forum Account

MY HEXUS

EVENTS

INDUSTRY PRESS RELEASES

User Name
Password