ASUS, a company that already sells more than enough custom video cards is now introducing its new MATRIX branded ROG (Republic of Gamers) EN9600GT HTDI/512M. I'll skip the mile long press release pointing out at this card as being the world's most intelligent, and write out some of its main advantages that might convince you of buying it. Dressed in black, the GeForce 9600GT MATRIX is equipped with the ASUS Super Hybrid Engine for automatic detection and adjustments of voltage, clock settings and GPU fan speed. With its help the card lowers its GPU voltage in 2D mode and stops the GPU fan for completely silent operation. When required, the fan will start to spin depending on the GPU load and temperature. Futhermore, the EN9600GT MATRIX comes with iTracker, a feature that provides four different mode profiles: Optimized Mode, Gaming Mode, Power Saving Mode, and Default mode. It also displays in real-time the GPU/shader/memory clock speeds, GPU/memory voltages, GPU loading, GPU/memory/power IC/ambient temperatures, and the GPU fan speed. Finally, the card's remaining characteristics: 650MHz/1625MHz/1.8GHz (900MHz DDR3) core, shader and memory clock speeds respectively. Click here to see the full press release.

BFG Technologies, Inc., the leading North American and European supplier of advanced NVIDIA-based 3D graphics cards, power supplies and other PC enthusiast products, announced today the BFG GeForce 8800GT OCX and BFG GeForce 9600GT OCX 512MB PCI Express 2.0 graphics cards.

ASUS is preparing to unveil a number of new products during the upcoming Computex 2008, but one of them deserves special attention. Named ASUS EN9600GT Matrix, this will be a tricked out GeForce 9600GT video card equipped with a specially designed hybrid cooler. The custom dual-slot cooler of the card consists of a large aluminum heatsink with heatpipes and a fan that will start working only when the card runs 3D applications or the temperature rises considerably. Besides all this, the new card will come with a black PCB, single DVI and HDMI outputs and optical sound output. Clock speeds are still unknown, but the EN9600GT Matrix is very likely to be highly overclocked, considering the big cooler and the Republic of Gamers badge on its fan. More information about the card will be unveiled during Computex 2008.

Walton Chaintech, the world's renowned memory module and graphics card manufacturer, will proudly display its latest products at 2008 Taipei Computex. Walton Chaintech is about to showcase excellent product portfolio including APOGEE overclocking memory modules and CHAINTECH gaming graphics cards embraced by the theme of Gaming with Passion at TWTC Nangang Hall Stand J306 in the first floor. During the show, overclocking live demonstration, magic show, jazz dances and limited cocktails will be available at Walton Chaintech's stand.

Sparkle Computer has introduced a non-reference GeForce 9600GT using a new Dual Fly cooling. The card comes factory overclocked with a core running at 700MHz, 1850MHz shader clock and 512MB GDDR3 memory at 2.0GHz using 256-bit memory interface. The most interesting part is the cooler though. According to the company's PR "This high-efficient Cooling System developed by SPARKLE itself consists of aluminum die-casting thermal base with copper core inside, three high-efficient heat pipes and dual cooling fans with 0.2 mm thin cooling fins. When the GPU starts working, the copper core inside the aluminum die-casting thermal base will quickly take the working heat from the GPU to the heat-pipe horizontally put inside the thermal base, and the heat will be equably and rapidly spread to the left part and right part of the aluminum die-casting thermal base, at same time, the two circular heat pipes also quickly bring the heat from GPU to the 0.2 mm thin cooling fins, now the strong wind pressure and airflow made by two cooling fans take all the heat out of the cooling module." The actual gain from Dual Fly is up to 10°C cooler GPU, 5°C cooler case temperature and less noise (around 29dB). The Calibre P960 is expected to be available soon.

BFG Technologies announced today the BFG NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT OC2 512MB PCI Express 2.0 graphics card for a suggested retail price of $249.99 USD.

With emphasis on providing quiet computing environments to users, ASUS has today introduced the ASUS EN9600GT SILENT/HTDI/512M graphics card. This ingenious piece of hardware incorporates the latest thermal solution - the V-Cool Heatsink, which features the V-Engine concept and Intercooler technology. This exclusive innovation guarantees absolutely quiet operations, and an efficient means of heat dissipation for the most stable performances. The unique design of the V-Cool Heatsink will lower GPU temperatures by 10ºC in comparison to reference designed boards with 0dB noise generation; while the integrated SmartDoctor feature provides users with the option to overclock the Shader Clock for even better graphical performances.

Inno3D introduced last week the new i-Chill ZEROtherm Hurricane equipped GeForce 9600GT. Boasting overclocking speeds up to 750MHz/1625MHz/1940MHz core/shader/memory this card utilizes the ZeroTherm HC92 Cu 8800 3-in-1 cooler. Ideal for both active or passive operation, it is made of a large copper heatsink with 4 heat-pipes and 92mm fan. The fan can be removed at any time, making the card virtually silent and 100% passive cooled. If you're not that kind of person, you can always put the supplied fan back on its place and enjoy low temperatures. Other than that the card comes with 3 years warranty, gold plated DVI and TV-out, top A1 solid capacitors, and a free game included in the bundle.

XFX, one of the main NVIDIA GeForce graphics card manufacturers, has decided to try and outsell rivals by cutting prices on its 8800 GT, 8800 GS and 9600 GT cards. All three standard versions of the cards will now be $30 cheaper thanks to mail-in rebates being offered by online retailers such as Newegg and TigerDirect. This means that the 512MB 8800 GT will now sell for $189 including a copy of Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts, the 384MB 8800 GS will now cost $119.99 and the 9600 GT has a new price tag of $149. The overclocked versions of the 8800 GS and 9600 GT are also seeing price drops of $30 and $20 respectively, which means they will now be sold for $139.99 and $179.

Another day, another ForceWare driver. NVIDIA has released the 174.16 beta of its display driver, which is intended for the 9600 GT. It is available for all versions of Windows XP and Vista, and although it may support other cards the 9600 GT is the only card listed on NVIDIA's website. Download locations are as follows:

• Windows XP 32-bit - here
• Windows XP 64-bit - here
• Windows Vista 32-bit - here
• Windows Vista 64-bit - here

SPARKLE today announced the SPARKLE GeForce 9600 GT Passive Cooling Graphics Card, a mainstream graphics card product which delivers totally silent DirectX 10 operations for gamers.

Leadtek is pleased to announce the launch of new mid-range graphics cards, WinFast PX9600 GT and PX9600 GT Extreme, to cost- conscious gamers. The new cards, with all solid aluminum capacitors for ultra high durability and stability, even during over-clocking, deliver high performance through the new HCT (High-resolution Compression Technology), and present the best cost per performance ever with up to 90% performance increase on the SUB US$200 segment.

XFX officially announces its latest brainchild, the XFX Geforce 9600GT yesterday. The first born in the highly anticipated 9-series, the XFX GeForce 9600 GT pushes the gaming experience to new heights with up to 90 percent greater performance than any GeForce card in its class. This prodigal child gives a huge value for its price. The immersive entertainment experience is the powerful product of full Microsoft DirectX 10 support, NVIDIA's Quantum Effects technology, Lumenex engine as well as Unified Architecture, ensuring that this amazing new card can play the hottest games with jaw-dropping speed.

NVIDIA Corporation, also unveiled today the first graphics processing unit (GPU) of its next-generation GeForce 9 Series that may offer the largest single-generation performance jump in the Company's history. Introduced today, the NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT GPU delivers up to 116%* more performance than its predecessor at a price below $199.

BFG Technologies, the leading North American and European supplier of advanced NVIDIA-based 3D graphics cards, power supplies and other PC enthusiast products, announced today the BFG NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT OC 512MB PCI Express 2.0 graphics card for a suggested retail price of $229.99 USD. "The BFG NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT OC offers users a great performing card at an affordable price", said John Malley, senior director of marketing for BFG Technologies.

One more week and some of you might receive exactly the same ASUS EN9600GT 512MB retail package. The official release date for all GeForce 9600 GT cards is February 21, 2008.

NVIDIA informed their partners that the voltage issue with the GeForce 9600GT cards has been fixed.

The NVVDD is change to 1.15V by placing a 0 ohm resistor at R587 and remove R561, R566, and R570. To enable load-line feature, a 0 ohm resistor is placed at R522 and 2.2nF capacitor is placed at C519 and R527 is removed.

The cards are already fixed and launch date is confirmed as previous for February 21, 2008.

CHIPHELL has managed to get hold of a couple of NVIDIA's upcoming 9600 GT samples, and as you can probably guess that means only one thing: SLI. The two regular 9600 GTs were benchmarked in a system running with an Intel E6850 processor at 3.0GHz, an nForce 680i motherboard and 2GB DDR2 memory at 800MHz, using Windows Vista as the operating system. By itself, a single 9600 GT scored 10036 points in 3DMark06, but when combined in SLI the two cards managed an impressive 13080 points - over 900 points above the score of a GeForce 8800 Ultra (12142) on the same system. Meanwhile in 3DMark05 the 9600 SLI hit 18805 points and the setup reached over 55000 points in 3DMark03. Not bad for a mid-range card.

NVIDIA has informed their partners that the launch of the GeForce 9600 GT has been pushed back by one week from February 14th to February 21st due to a voltage issue with the reference cards (G94P545), which may cause some systems to 'hang' in certain situations. Here's the notice:

We've seen a small percentage of 9600 GT NVTTM boards exhibiting a voltage transient on the NVDD power supply during certain applications

PConline.com.cn has posted what should be the first official full review of NVIDIA GeForce 9600GT 512MB. In this 16 page long review you'll find in depth comparison between GeForce 9600GT, GeForce 8600GTS 256MB, the newly released GeForce 8800GS 384MB 192bit and ATI Radeon HD3850 256MB. On page 3 there's also a size comparison between G92, G94, G84 and RV670 GPU cores. The review is written in foreign language, but I'm sure you won't need a dictionary to understand the pics and benchmark scores.

VR-Zone claims to have some benchmarks of NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce 9600 GT graphics card, which will be the first of the GeForce 9 series of cards that the company will release. However, as always with benchmarks for unreleased products, take these with a pinch of salt - as often as not they're totally made up.

Expreview reports what we should expect from NVIDIA's GeForce 9 series first born in terms of performance. The card's clocks are 650/1625/1800MHz(core/shader/mem), using PCB design P545, GPU codename is "G94-300", made by TSMC's 65nm process technology. The testbed: Intel Core 2 QX9650@3GHz, ASUS Maximus Formula ROG X38 DDR2, Geil 2x1GB DDR2-800 4-4-4-10-1T, Windows Vista Ultimate 32bit SP1 Beta V.668 using modded ForceWare 169.25WHQL drivers.