Continuing my experiences with low-end 3D gaming graphic cards, it was time to raise the stakes slightly. I was tempted by the offer of an nVidia 9600GT card at a really low price. The PNY Geforce 9600GT (£45, 512Mb DDR3, 10,000 3Dmark06) was on sale at PCworld for a short time so I grabbed one. A revelation when introduced as the true successor to the classic 6600GT it had great reviews. To me it offered almost twice the performance of my previous winner the nVidia 9500GT (£37, 512Mb GDDR3, 5,875 3Dmark06) for just £8 more.
It is a larger size card that requires an additional 6-pin power connection. It was almost silent, certainly quieter than the 9500GT. I discovered however that not all was as it seems. This version was a derivative of the original two year old design. An eco or lower power version that has a clock speed of just 600MHz instead of the original's 650MHz. Also the shaders and memory was clocked slightly lower. This obviously leads to lower benchmark figures, but still impressive for a cheap graphics card.
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