PALiT NE/960TSX0252 GeForce 9600GT SONIC 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail

Reviewed By: HappyPessimist on 7/28/2008

Tech Level: somewhat high - Ownership: 1 day to 1 week

Pros: Great performance for the price. Having HDMI on board with 1080p output is great. Can play the fps games that I have. I am very happy with my purchase.

Cons: Card is big...not as big as some make it out to be but still big. I have a mid sized tower and as others have stated the card is a two-PCI slot card it also caused me to sacrifice one of my hard drives.

Other Thoughts: I really got this card because of the price/performance ratio and the on board hdmi output. It works great. I upgraded from a sapphire card and this card is easly 3x as large so it was a bit of a shock. I paired this with a sony Blu-Ray drive and am finally getting the most out of my hdtv.

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Works like a dream

Reviewed By: toothman on 7/27/2008

Tech Level: average - Ownership: 1 month to 1 year

Pros: Works perfectly for everything I do. Runs Oblivion maxed out at around 30-40 fps; I stray away from AA since you can't use DX10.1 with an NVidia card, but HD Lighting looks just as good. Other games I play include Halo 2 (80-120 fps) and Crysis (about 30 on medium). Any older games get HUGE framerates with no spikes. This card cannot disappoint you for the vast majority of video card utilities. I'm expecting great results from Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3. For $143, you will not find a better value. You can spend $50 more on the Radeon 4850 and achieve about 5% better performance, so if 5% is worth $50 to you, you might as well spend $600 for only twice the performance.

NOTE FOR THOSE WANTING TO SLI: This card gains a huge 77% AVERAGE FPS BOOST from going SLI, with that percentage GROWING as the games become more demanding. According to the benchmarks, you will be able to play all current games maxed out with high fps (Crysis being the lowest at around 25-30). Great SLI potential.

Cons: Physically big, but this is no new "problem." Most cases can handle just one. In my HP stock case, the card could be even longer with no consequence. Dell cases may have a problem, though.

Other Thoughts: Using Athlon 64 X2 4200+, 3gb DDR2 533 (PC2 4200), and XCLIO 500W GOODPOWER on Vista 32b. No compatibility problems. I've overclocked this thing to 750/1080/1800 with no stability issues yet, fan running at fixed speed 75% with the temp never going over 65 celcius. I could probably overclock it more, but why? It does everything I need it to.

The 1gb version of the 9600gt provides marginal performance boosts as the stream processors and core clock speeds remain the same with the same overclocking potential. Maybe if it was GDDR4 or GDDR5, 512mb more memory would make a significant difference, but as it is that much memory just gets bottlenecked to the point of cost-inefficiancy.

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Awesome Card

Reviewed By: Speedmonkay on 7/22/2008

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 month to 1 year

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: This card is a beast. Handles DirectX10 games beautifully. The variety of ports is great. I have it hooked up to a 42" HP Plasma with HDMI and it is just wonderful.

Cons: None at all

Other Thoughts: I love this card so much that I am about to buy a second one to SLI them.

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