Galaxy is readying another variant of the GeForce 9600 GT Low Power Edition. Prior to this, the company had launched the 9600 GT Low Power, Low Profile (LPLP edition), and the 9600 GT Green Edition. Unlike the two, the new variant uses a full-height PCB, and a cooler made by Cooler Master, that doesn't span into more than one expansion slot.

The card draws all its power from the PCI-Express slot, and uses a 2+1 phase power design. Under the cooler is a 55 nm G94 GPU, with clock speeds of 600/1625 MHz (core/shader). The 512 MB of 256-bit GDDR3 memory is passively cooled under the cooler's air-flow. It is clocked at 900 MHz (1800 MHz DDR). Output is care of DVI, D-Sub, and audio-relayed HDMI connectors. It's pricing and availability isn't disclosed yet.

Earlier this week, news on NVIDIA selling keychains with real GPUs in them, made waves. The company has these keychains up in its online store that caters to the North American region, for US $9.99. It looks like the ploy to sell or give away GPU keychains is bigger than we thought it was. Galaxy, one of NVIDIA's largest board partners, has its own GPU keychain up for grabs, which it plans to sell in Mainland China, United States, and Japan. Currently Galaxy isn't selling it, but instead using it as a company souvenir in events held by the company. Perhaps the most interesting part of this keychain is that the GPU in it is not G98. Expreview notes that the GPU has the same area as the G94 GPU on the company's GeForce 9600 GT Low Profile Edition. We'll leave the guesswork to you.

NVIDIA sought to give the GeForce 9600 GT a refresh with a new SKU, the 9600 GT Green Edition, that makes use of the reduced thermal footprints of the 55 nm G94 graphics core, and slightly reduced clock speeds, to result in energy-efficient graphics cards. Some of these do not require the 6-pin PCI-E power input. Gigabyte has its first accelerator based on this core, the GV-N96TSL-1GI. The company goes a step ahead in exploiting the thermal characteristics of the core, to come up with a silent-cooler design.

The cooler which Gigabyte refers to as "Silent Cell", consists of a central GPU contact block from which heatpipes emerge, conveying heat to an aluminum fin array that spans across the full length of the card. A part of it even protrudes out of the back-plate. The cooler relies on convectional currents of the air inside the case to draw heat from the fins, and leave the case through the backplate. Cooling aside, Gigabyte got generous with the amount of memory: 1 GB of GDDR3 across a 256-bit wide bus. Perhaps it compensates for the slightly reduced clock speeds, the extant to which, isn't known as of now. The card will hit shelves shortly, by when we could tell its price.

Where invention pauses, innovation takes over. This seems to be the case with NVIDIA's initiative to release "Green Edition" products of some of its popular GPUs, which brandishes energy-efficiency. NVIDIA's move to release revisions of the G92 and G94 GPUs built on the newer 55 nm process, coupled with clock-speed and core voltage reductions, seems to have made it possible for manufacturers to redesign the cards in a way that they end up being not only energy efficient, but also cheaper to produce.

Palit seems to be one of the first to be out with a 9600 GT Green Edition accelerator that lacks a 6-pin PCI-Express power input. The card has reached retail channels in Japan, pictured by AKIBA. The card uses a core clock speed of 600 MHz, with its 512 MB of GDDR3 memory clocked at 900 (1800 DDR) MHz. The card uses Palit's regular radial GPU cooler design. It draws all its power from the PCI-Express slot. It lacks an SLI connector. Output options include DVI, D-Sub and HDMI. It is priced at ¥ 7980 (around US $86.7).

The GeForce 9600 GT Green Edition is NVIDIA's newest SKU that is based on an energy-efficient variant of the GeForce 9600 GT graphics processor. The SKU maintains the G94 GPU design, except for that it is built on the newer 55 nm silicon process (model: G94-350-B1), that is expected to add to its energy efficiency, also that the GPU makes do with a lower core voltage of around 1.0V from its original 1.1V figure on the 65 nm variant. At its default voltage setting the GPU uses reference clock speeds of 625/1625/900 MHz (core/shader/memory).

Galaxy designed its first accelerator based on the new GPU, to which it added its own set of innovations. The card uses a jumper to allow users to manually set the GPU voltage. At its default state (pins 1-2 short), the GPU operates at 1.0V, but when pins 2-3 are short, the GPU voltage enters a "pressurized state" (increases). When the jumper is removed (neither pins short), the GPU voltage plummets to 0.8V. The Galaxy accelerator needs the 6-pin PCI-E power connector for operation. The GPU is cooled by a classic Zalman VF703 Al cooler, while the memory is passively cooled under its air-flow.