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.

ECS is introducing two new GeForce 9 series accelerators which feature low-power designs. The accelerators based on GeForce 9800 (N9800GTE-1GMU-F) GT comes with reference clock speeds, while GeForce 9600 GT (N9600GTE-1GMU-F) with slightly reduced clock speeds. The cards feature 1 GB of GDDR3 memory, double that of the reference design.

The cards make use of Arctic Cooling L2 Pro GPU cooler with a 92 mm PWM-controlled fan. Power is drawn entirely from the PCI-Express slot, as the cards lack the 6-pin PCI-E power inputs. The N9800GTE-1GMU-F comes with clock speeds of 600/900 MHz (core/memory), which are the reference speeds for 9800 GT, while the N9600GTE-1GMU-F 550/900 MHz.

ZOTAC International, an award winning manufacturing of graphics cards and motherboards, today unleashes a new high-performance graphics card fit for low-profile applications - the new ZOTAC GeForce 9600GT LP. The ZOTAC GeForce 9600GT LP delivers intense 3D visuals and breathtaking 3D performance to small form factor system users with limited expansion capabilities. Powered by 64 stream processors, the ZOTAC GeForce 9600GT LP is ready to take on the latest DirectX 10, OpenGL 2.1, NVIDIA CUDA and PhysX enabled 3D games and applications. A wide 256-bit memory interface joins the 64 stream processors to 512MB of high-speed GDDR3 video memory for phenomenal performance at high-resolutions and high levels of anti-aliasing for smooth frame rates and jagged-free visuals.

"Small form factor systems are becoming more popular nowadays with the advent of low power systems and slick designs; however, small form factor systems are limited in terms of expansion capabilities and typically require low-profile expansion cards. Our new ZOTAC GeForce 9600GT LP enables small form factor system owners to upgrade their systems to GeForce 9-class graphics with CUDA and PhysX technologies for high-performance 3D graphics," said Carsten Berger, marketing director, ZOTAC International.

ZOTAC International, an award-winning manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards, today unveils new GeForce 9600GT based graphics cards with greater power efficiency. The ZOTAC GeForce 9600GT Eco delivers performance comparable to the award-winning ZOTAC GeForce 9600GT, but with 40-percent more power efficiency. "It is important to think green and reduce our resource consumption. With the new power-efficient ZOTAC GeForce 9600GT Eco, users can have an eco-friendly graphics card that offers competitive performance," said Carsten Berger, marketing director, ZOTAC International.

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.

Zotac has two new video cards in its labs, waiting to be released very soon. The first one is a GeForce 9600 GT Green Edition with clock speeds of 600 MHz for the core, 1500 MHz for the shaders and 1800 MHz for the 512MB GDDR3 memory. The card is shorter than a standard GeForce 9600 GT, and also has no 6-pin external power connector.
The second card is a water-cooled GeForce GTX 285. The card uses full-cover single slot GPU block, which is enough to cool core, shader and memory frequencies of 702 MHz, 1512 MHz and 2592 MHz respectively.
Both cards are most likely to be introduced at CeBIT 2009.

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.