XFX 9600 GT 512MB Review

ccokeman - February 21, 2008
» Discuss this article (44)

Lowest Prices

Testing:

At OverclockersClub.com, we use a series of benchmarks to stress the graphics card. We will use a series of newer, as well as a few more seasoned gaming benchmarks to show how well the XFX 9600GT compares to some of the other enthusiast video cards on the market. All driver settings and clockspeeds will be left at factory default settings on both the CPU and GPU to minimize or eliminate any variables from impacting the results. The test system used in this review is listed below. After testing the card at stock speeds, I will overclock the video card to see what kind of performance can be gained.

Processor: Intel Q6600 Core 2 Quad 266x9
Motherboard:Gigabyte GA-X48-DQ6
Memory: Mushkin HP2 6400 5-4-4-12
Video Card(s): XFX 9600GT 512MB 171.16 Drivers
Power Supply: Mushkin 650watt Modular Power supply
Hard Drive: 1 x Seagate 320GB SATA
Opticals: NEC DV5700
O/S: Windows Vista Ultimate Edition

Comparison Video Cards:

Overclocking:

Overclocked settings:

XFX 9600GT 512MB 727/1033

To overclock the XFX 9600GT I used Nvidia's Ntune software. I started at the default clock speeds of 650 on the core and 900 on the memory. From there I worked the core and memory clocks up until I found a good balance of clock and memory speed. The final speeds were 727 on the core and 1033 on the memory. To run these speeds I set the fan control manually to 100% to maximize the cooling capacity of the single slot cooling solution. For a $180 dollar card, a core speed increase of 77MHz and a memory speed increase of 133 MHz are not to shabby if you ask me. At no point did the temperatures get out of hand, which is surprising considering the size of the heatsink.