Introduction

Today NVIDIA introduces the first card of the GeForce 9 Series. The GeForce 9600 GT we have on the testbench today is based on the new G94 core which is basically a cut down version of the G92 used on several GeForce 8 products like 8800 GT and 8800 GTS 512. NVIDIA took most of the G92 design and removed 64 shader pipes. The render backend has remained the same. From an engineering standpoint there is absolutely no reason why this product should be called GeForce 9 and not be a GeForce 8 product. However, since the GeForce 8 lineup is already quite crowded and GeForce 9 needs a lower midrange product anyway, NVIDIA chose to call it Geforce 9600 GT. When comparing GeForce 8600 GT with 9600 GT, NVIDIA claims that performance will double just by moving one generation ahead.

Zotac has taken the NVIDIA reference design and increased the clock speeds by over 10% to have a product that stands out from the crowd of reference designs that other manfuacturers offer.

Packaging & Contents

The box uses the established Zotac design in orange. On the front you find the most important specs with more details on the back and the sides.



You will receive:

• Graphics card
• Instruction Manual + Driver CD
• DVI Adapter + HDMI Adapter
• TV out cable + SPDIF cable
• PCI-E power cable

The Card

The Zotac 9600 GT uses a single slot cooler design. As you can see the pretty Zotac print on the cooler is just a sticker which is sitting on top of the NVIDIA default cooler design.


The card features two DVI outputs which can be used with digital flat panels for resolutions up to 2560x1600. In case you still have an old analog display you can use the included DVI adapter. HDMI+HDCP+Audio is also supported via the included HDMI adapter. In order to transmit audio you also have to connect your motherboard's/sound card's SPDIF out to the card using the included cable. The GPU has also support for DisplayPort, board manufacturers can choose whether they want to replace one DVI port with a DisplayPort.
On the VVIKOO 9600 GT Turbo for example you can find two DVI ports + 1x DisplayPort + 1x HDMI.


Here are the front and the back of the card, high-res versions are also available (front, back). If you choose to use these images for voltmods etc, please include a link back to this site.