Overclocking and Noise
Overclocking wise, the Black Diamond process switch at TMSC has done RV360 the world of good. 9600 Pro wasn't a poor overclocker, but yikes, the 9600XT is in a world of its own.
Up from 500/300, that's a pretty special core overclock for a midrange board and I'll stick my neck out and say 600MHz core should be achievable on partner boards with better cooling than the measly aluminium affair on the reference board.
The clock is 3DMark03 stable with no artifacting, not a one shot attempt with a few sparklies and a fat fan pointing at it to help things along.
Look out for overclocked numbers in an upcoming article on the card I can't name. It's worth pointing out again that OverDrive isn't available on 9600XT yet and that current overclocking tools like RadClocker don't pick up the core clock properly (they detect it at 1/2 the speed), but Powerstrip did just fine.
