While the 9600 GT has been around a while now — it originally came out in February of ‘08 — it is still a capable card, able to handle all of today’s games. Actually, although there has been plenty of movements and changes to the video cards hailing from the higher-end spectrum of performance, the landscape of more price-conscious, middle-road options, has not changed a great extent in the last year. Unless of course, you are focusing solely on the price-tags.
Currently selling for well below the $100 mark on many online e-tailers, the Gigabyte 9600 GT is not going to be breaking anyone’s bank — even in this rough patch of global economics. And this is not a standard 9600 GT either. This is Gigabyte’s third 9600 GT: the GV-N96TZL-1GI. It has 1GB of memory, a non-stock fan from Zalman, and Gigabyte’s Ultra Durable VGA.
Having spent a fair amount of time with this Zalman fan on a small selection of different cards, we can say that it is a good all-around cooler. The copper and aluminum fins are widely spread out, effectively dissipating heat. The fins are arranged in a way that will help focus the heat into the right parts of case; if your chassis has a side-fan you should be in very good shape as far as heat circulation is concerned.
Ultra Durable means that the Gigabyte has spent a bit more, improving the build of the product: in this case, for the video card, the amount of copper in the PCB is doubled; solid organic polymer capacitors were used; ferrite core chokes have made an appearance; and low resistance MOSFETs are used. Basically this all means that this Gigabyte 9600 GT should have a more stable power source, last longer, and have better overclocking potential that stock cards.
The Gigabyte 9600 GT GV-N96TZL-1G1 requires one PCIE power connector. If you have an older, molex-only PSU don’t worry; there is an adapter in the box.
While the 9600GT might be taking a touch too much juice when idling, when bearing a full GPU load the numbers look pretty good. Gigabyte’s use of higher quality capacitors and chokes are presumably responsible for some of the credit.
However, on the more pessimistic side of things, with the heat of the ATI-NVIDIA price-war in full roaring rage right now, the one catch to the 9600 GT might be that — as fast as it is — many gamers might have wished they spent just a little bit more, say $20 or $30, in order to step up to something with a bit more horsepower, such as a 9800 GT, or another aggressively priced performance card, foremost perhaps being the HD 4830 currently selling for around $100.
But for the price that this card is going at, every dollar is money well spent. The 9600 GT should be able to handle things well for another stretch down the road of PC gaming, even if it has been out for about a year now.
