Product Listing

Gigabyte GV-NX96T512HP (GeForce 9600 GT 512MB)

By Vincent Chang - 15 Apr 2008

Conclusion

Conclusion

An interesting nugget of information that inadvertently came to light in Microsoft's ongoing Vista Capable lawsuit was confirmation that NVIDIA's early buggy drivers for Windows Vista were not merely nit-picking from enthusiasts. According to Microsoft's logs, NVIDIA drivers accounted for almost 30% of system crashes. No doubt, the larger market share enjoyed by NVIDIA may correspond to a higher number of such incidents but with fellow graphics chipmaker ATI scoring around 9%, it does paint a less than flattering picture.

Since our test system is still currently on Windows XP Professional, we can't comment about this with any first hand experience but we believe that the situation has been much improved now. It had better be, as NVIDIA is now pushing its new mainstream GeForce 9600 GT, which is likely to get more consumers onboard, thanks to its price and performance. For those looking at one of these new cards, the Gigabyte GV-NX96T512HP looks like an interesting design.

Passively cooled graphics cards are not new anymore but the return of 2D/3D clock separation on this Gigabyte GV-NX96T512HP is an interesting twist on an old idea.


Gigabyte's attempt to custom the GeForce 9600 GT is a huge improvement over the reference board they pushed out at launch day. While that was a standard GeForce 9600 GT with a less than competitive price tag, this new Turbo Force version has quite a few tricks that set it apart from the competition. Firstly, the overclocked frequencies are one of the higher ones that we have seen and its performance reflect that. Then the presence of the passive cooler makes this a completely silent graphics card. Finally, the 2D/3D clock separation is another nice touch to reduce the power consumption and heat of the card when idling. The temperatures may seem a bit alarming to some users but with a properly ventilated chassis, it should be fine.

With all these enhancements to the original design, this Gigabyte is a rather premium implementation of the GeForce 9600 GT and for that you can expect to pay around US$185. However, you may just like what you have paid.

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