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MSI N9600GT ZILENT review |
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Written by Dimitar Dinchev a.k.a. Veseliq
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Monday, 31 March 2008 |
Page 1 of 10
One of the newest NVIDIA models, the one named GeForce 9600 GT, began to gather popularity because it's excellent price/performance ratio. In the ModReactor lab we have already tested few models of this card, including a non referent factory overclocked card, but all of them were with the NVIDIA recommended 512MB of memory. Now through MSI N9600GT ZILENT we'll see how would the 9600GT like to have 1GB of memory.
For beginning lets say that MSI had already pushed out close to 10 models based on 9600GT. The MSI N9600GT T2D512-OC that we reviewed recently, won the ModReactor "RECOMMENDED" award, because its superb performance, rich bundle non-referent and silent cooler, long warranty and great price - a mere 10 bucks more than a plain referent model.
MSI N9600GT ZILENT on its own is distinguished from most of the cards on the market mainly by two things. First, the card is with original ZALMAN cooler (the ZILENT series of MSI is beginning to build up history, as a result of cooperation between both companies). Just as assumed this cooler is much more effective than the referent one, recommended by NVIDIA, while being in typically ZALMAN way - completely silent. The second thing distinguishing 9600GT is the double amount of memory - 1GB. Honestly speaking this is quite unusual for a medium class card and indeed was the main reason that made us willing to review the card.
As it is seen in the above table, on top of it all MSI N9600GT ZILENT 1GB is also with raised frequencies of the core and scalar processors. That's understandable, knowing well that as whole GeForce 9600GT has huge overclock potential and even with stock cooler is capable of reaching higher frequencies with ease. The ZILENT's frequencies are raised with 50MHz above the referent one or in other words 700MHz for the core instead of 650MHz.
Since we already have looked at all 9600 based cards heart - the G94 architecture in details, now we'll skip that part and will not get to technical about 9600 GT ZILENT. But ww will accent, as we always do, upon how the card looks and what kind (and quantity) of extra stuff you get for your money.
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