NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT Roundup – Gaming on the Cheap

The power consumption of the single 9600 GT cards are all pretty much in line; the higher clocked XFX card uses about 10 watts more than the passive reference clocked ASUS EN9600 GT Silent.

Looking the SLI power consumption graph you can see that going from a single GPU to two causes us to increase load power consumption by 30% – that isn’t too bad considering the 9800 GTX card uses just a handful of watts less than the 9600 GTs.  And the ASUS Radeon HD 3850 1GB isn’t in the same category in this regard really.

Our Three Combatants

Looking at the performance of the GeForce 9600 GT in general is pretty easy to sum up – for its price point the 9600 GT really is the best choice for the price and the AMD Radeon HD 3870 cards really can’t keep up in our testing.  It’s when we start to look at each of three 9600 GT models that we see some interesting distinction. 

The ASUS EN9600 GT Silent does a good job of offering a unique set of features in a somewhat bland world of graphics cards.  It offers up the same performance of the other reference design 9600 GTs on the market but is able to fit a niche market – those wanting a completely silent (or as close as possible at least) computing environment.  The ASUS Silent would fit in well in an HTPC for example where a user still wanted high quality gaming.

ASUS had another entry into this roundup in the form of the EN9600 GT TOP that takes a very different approach to the 9600 GT GPU.  Rather than goes for silence, the TOP version shuns the reference cooler for a custom Glaciator cooler design and then proceeds to overclock the card fairly far.  The 9600 GT core has been around for a little while now and vendors are more comfortable pushing it further than they were early in its life.  With 10% faster core, shader and memory clocks over standard 9600 GTs the ASUS EN9600 GT TOP performs better while remaining cooler.


And of course we can’t forget the XFX 9600 GT XXX Edition, what with the slightly risqué title and all.  The XFX card is unique in that it continues to use the standard reference cooler design and thus is the only of the three cards tested here that maintains the single slot design that NVIDIA original designed.  Not only that, but as the XXX moniker from XFX has come to indicate, this is the highest factory overclocked model that XFX makes of this GPU; and at 740 MHz core and 1850 MHz shader clocks it passes up even the well overclocked ASUS card above.

All of these cards offer the same sets of features including two dual-link DVI outputs, support for DVI-to-HDMI connections and audio pass through with an included SPDIF cable.  That still isn’t as good as the built-in audio processor of the AMD Radeon 2xxx and 3xxx series cards, but it’s a step. 

Pricing and Availability

With the release of new cards from NVIDIA in recent days, you might think the GeForce 9600 GT has lost some appeal.  On the contrary, seeing a much lower cost graphics card that has such great performance potential for the enthusiast, especially when you take the multi-GPU capabilities into consideration, is a great relief to the PC market.

As of this writing, you can find all of three of these cards for pretty reasonable prices on our pricing engine. The ASUS EN9600GT Silent can be found for $130, the ASUS EN9600GT TOP sells for about $130 and the XFX 9600 GT XXX Edition can be found for $150. 

So what can we make of these prices, especially with the release of the AMD Radeon HD 4850 and price drop on the GeForce 9800 GTX?  At $130 or so, these 9600 GT cards are still good buys for consumers on a tight budget.  I would also expect the 9600 GT price to drop a little bit further for the most basic reference-style models, but the three we tested here are from from standard. 

Final Thoughts

The 9600 GT might seem a tad bit less exciting after the most recent AMD and NVIDIA GPU releases, but you can’t argue with a $130 graphics card that is able to perform as well as it did in our tests!  Both the ASUS EN9600GT TOP and the XFX 9600 GT XXX cards were overclocked out of the box offering better performance than reference cards and the ASUS EN9600GT Silent should be a welcome addition to anyone’s quiet-computing environment.  Keep an eye on all three of these cards as the prices continue to fall over the summer and pick one up for for that second gaming system or even for your HTPC.