![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Friday , July 11, 2008
- Author:
- Matthew Krysiak
- Editor:
- Brent Justice
- Google +1
BFGTech GeForce 9600 GT OCX ThermoIntelligence
The GeForce 9600 GT was a great card for the money in its time, but with the next generation video cards out now and NVIDIAs recent price drops where does this leave it? We see how the BFGTech GeForce 9600 GT OCX does against its new competitors in Crysis, Age of Conan, and Assassin’s Creed.
The GeForce 9600 GT
On the 21st of February 2008 we took our first look at the GeForce 9600 GT. It has a reference design of 650MHz GPU frequency, 1.625GHz shader frequency, and 512MB of GDDR3 at 1.8GHz memory on a 256-bit memory bus. One of our final thoughts in that evaluation was if we could find it for under $169 what a great value it would be. Soon after that article, our wish came true and the GeForce 9600 GT had become great video card for those with a budget.
Step forward to today with the recent releases of NVIDIA’s and AMD’s next generation GPUs and we see new competitors for the 9600 GT. The Radeon HD 4850, for as low $165 after mail rebate, has proven to be quite a performer. In fact, it has even brought NVIDIA to reduce its prices and bring the GeForce 9800 GTX down to $200. With this new race in the budget minded category, we wondered where does this leave cards like the BFGTech GeForce 9600 GT OCX at $150 after mail in rebate?
Today we are going to be taking a look at BFGTech’s: GeForce 9600 GT OCX .
BFGTech GeForce 9600 GT OCX
The GeForce 9600 GT OCX is BFGTech’s highest overclocked 9600 GT. It has a GPU frequency of 725MHz, a stream processors clock speed of 1.85GHz, and a memory frequency of 1.95GHz. This puts it at 75MHz on the GPU, 225MHz on the stream processors and 150MHz on the memory over reference frequencies. The 9600 GT OCX also sports a double slot heatsink with a green LED behind the clear fan blades.
Above is the e-tail box with a specification sticker replacing a full graphical theme that you would have on a brick and mortar store box. The specification sticker includes the cards frequencies, texture fill rate, memory bandwidth, etc. On the back of the box is BFGTech’s standard text and graphics.
The BFGTech GeForce 9600 GT OCX uses the standard references design with a double slot cooling solution. We are slightly disappointed to see the mundane green PCB board for their top tier OCX line, especially since there is such a gorgeous heatsink on video card. It has black fins with a radial aluminum heat-pipe and clear fan blades that lets the green LED shine through them. There are also gunmetal colored aluminum heatsinks covering the memory and power circuitry.
On the back of the video card is one 6-pin power connector and on the top there are the SLI and audio connectors. On the front of the video is the standard package of two DVI ports and a S-video port. And while the cooling solution does take up an extra slot the PCI bracket is only a single slot bracket.
On the back of the card isn’t anything notable; just the spring retention screws for the heatsink and a few stickers. The video card comes with just basics: a Driver CD, a “Quick Install Guide,” a Molex to 6-pin power connector, a DVI to D-sub adapter, and a HDTV cable.