NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT Round-up: PNY, MSI, ASUS

NVIDIA's GeForce 9 Series was first introduced in February of this year by way of the 9600 GT launch. Admittedly, we thought it was interesting to see a new GeForce series launch, not with the flagship card, but rather with a new midrange offering. It makes perfect sense, though, considering that more people can afford midrange cards than can afford high-end, flagship cards. Since this launch, NVIDIA has added to the GeForce 9 Series by introducing the dual-GPU GeForce 9800 GX2 and the GeForce 9800 GTX. So far, the GeForce 9 Series seems to be another successful line from the NVIDIA camp.

In this article, we are going to expand our coverage of the GeForce 9600 GT by doing another round-up of three retail cards: the PNY Verto 9600 GT, the MSI N9600GT OC, and the ASUS EN9600GT SILENT. As you might expect, all three of these cards sport 512MB of GDDR3 and a 256-bit memory interface. What you may not expect is how different these three cards actually are. Two feature custom coolers, one of which is passive, making it silent. Because of these custom coolers, these two cards are dual-slot solutions while the third uses the single-slot reference cooler. Only one of them ships with a factory overclock while the other two utilize NVIDIA's reference clocks. We are eager to see how these three cards compare when it comes to performance, noise and heat. Let's jump right in and take a look at the specifications of all three side-by-side.

PNY Verto 9600 GT • more info • NVIDIA G94 Graphics Processing Unit 650 MHz GPU Clock Speed 64 Stream Processors 1,625 MHz Shader Clock Speed 512 MB GDDR-3 Memory 256-bit Memory Interface 1,800 MHz Memory Clock Speed 57.6 GB/s Memory Bandwidth Shader Model 4.0 (DirectX 10) Support PCI Express 2.0 Interface 6-pin PCI Express Power Connector Supports 2-Way SLI Configurations Single-Slot Cooling System (Reference) HDCP Ready 2 x Dual-Link DVI, 1 x HDTV/S-Video Outputs Warranty: 1 year (plus an additional 2 years upon completion of a registration form on PNY's website)

MSI N9600GT OC • more info • NVIDIA G94 Graphics Processing Unit 700 MHz GPU Clock Speed 64 Stream Processors 1,680 MHz Shader Clock Speed 512 MB GDDR-3 Memory 256-bit Memory Interface 1,900 MHz Memory Clock Speed 60.8 GB/s Memory Bandwidth Shader Model 4.0 (DirectX 10) Support PCI Express 2.0 Interface 6-pin PCI Express Power Connector Supports 2-Way SLI Configurations Dual-Slot Cooling System (Custom) HDCP Ready 2 x Dual-Link DVI, 1 x HDTV/S-Video Outputs Warranty: 3 year limited warranty (2 years Parts & Labor, and the third Year Parts ONLY)

ASUS EN9600GT SILENT • more info • NVIDIA G94 Graphics Processing Unit 650 MHz GPU Clock Speed 64 Stream Processors 1,625 MHz Shader Clock Speed 512 MB GDDR-3 Memory 256-bit Memory Interface 1,800 MHz Memory Clock Speed 57.6 GB/s Memory Bandwidth Shader Model 4.0 (DirectX 10) Support PCI Express 2.0 Interface 6-pin PCI Express Power Connector Supports 2-Way SLI Configurations Dual-Slot Cooling System (Custom, Passive) HDCP Ready 2 x Dual-Link DVI, 1 x HDTV/S-Video Outputs Warranty: 3 year limited warranty

As you can see, the MSI N9600GT OC sports a slight overclock of 700 MHz for the core clock, 1,900 MHz for the memory clock, and 1,680 MHz for the shader clock, while the PNY Verto 9600 GT and ASUS EN9600GT SILENT ship with no overclock (which puts them at the reference speeds of 650 MHz, 1,800 MHz, and 1,625 MHz, respectively). All three cards support the PCI Express 2.0 interface, 2-way SLI and DirectX 10. Each card sports two dual-link DVI outputs, one HDTV/S-video output, and a 6-pin PCI Express power connector.