Biostar's new GeForce 9600 GT holds no surprises. It follows the NVIDIA reference design, resulting in a stable and powerful card. Over time I am sure Biostar will find ways to diversify their product from the competition. With all the hype around the "new" GeForce9 Series it makes sense to be able to ship the product as fast as possible without losing time by design changes.
Even though there are no major technical advancements in the G92 GPU, which powers the first member of the GeForce 9 Family, the card is a great milestone when compared to the GeForce 8600 GT/GTS. Performance is doubled, yet the card runs neither hot nor loud. Even though there is a bit of tweaking potential left in the fan control, nobody has to be afraid of getting a leaf blower card.
I was amazed by the overclocking potential that our Biostar GeForce 9600 GT sample offered. Both core and memory could be overclocked by 20% over the NVIDIA reference frequencies, leaving more expensive pre-overclocked cards behind.
Unfortunately the included acessories are the absolute minimum required. You won't find an SPDIF cable or HDMI adapter in the package. Users who are interested in running this card inside their media PC won't have problems finding those on eBay though.