NVIDIA has not exaggerated when they promised that the GeForce 9600 GT Series would be twice as fast as the GeForce 8600 GT. In our testing it's actually faster than that, which also makes it a commitment on NVIDIA's side that performance gains of other future GeForce 9 products will be just as big. Only future will tell if NVIDIA can really achieve that goal. Even though the product is called GeForce 9 there are no major architectural advancements to call it that in my opinion. The G94 GPU is basically a cut down G92 core without additional features, the production process is still 65 nm too, which is perfectly fine of course but nothing new. However, since the GeForce 9 Series needs a product "9600 GT" it makes sense to release it as that since the GeForce 8 lineup is already pretty crowded.
Zotac's GeForce 9600 GT AMP! Edition comes with faster clocks out of the box to stand out from the crowd of reference cards. The higher core speed makes a nice difference, bringing the card right next to the GeForce 8800 GT in performance. Also the efficient NVIDIA architecture could help win the card the number one spot when it comes to performance per Watt, leaving AMD's closest offering in this category, the HD 3850 256 MB behind by a whopping 14% difference.
Small improvements can also be seen on the Media PC front where AMD's cards have been dominating the market. HDCP support is now included on all GeForce 9600 GT products, on GeForce 8 manufacturers had the choice whether they would include HDCP or not. Most didn't because it increased the card price slightly. The included SPDIF cable is more evidence that NVIDIA is trying to get into this ATI domain. It is now possible straight out of the box to run HMDI+HDCP+Audio. AMD's solution uses a GPU internal sound device while NVIDIA relies on the SPDIF of whatever onboard or sound card you have.
The fan noise of the card is a bit louder than what I had hoped for, but there is still plenty of temperature headroom for adjustments here in future revision. With a price of $199 (and $219 for the Zotac AMP! Edition) the cards are affordable, yet there are better performance per dollar options on the market right now, with the GeForce 8800 GS for example. Also AMD has drastically reduced their HD 3850 and HD 3870 prices to stay competitive.
Overall I would say this is another successful product launch for NVIDIA, hopefully they have enough stock of these cards to satisfy market demand.