Introduction:



Do you remember our first 9600GT overclocking endeavor? If you remember correctly, you'll think of Massman and Blind, two extreme overclockers of the Madshrimps overclocking team (formerly known as OC-Team.BE at HWBot.org) pushing a Galaxy sample over the edge using LN² cooling on both the graphics card as the cpu, resulting in some pretty good results. A few months have passed now and it’s time to tackle a new sample:



A week ago, however, Madshrimps sent a Twintech 9600GT card over to Blind's place to get the overclocking team back at full speed. This card has been reviewed by Geoffrey a while ago, so let's have a look at the evaluation and conclusive thoughts about the card.

The extra cooling performance of the Zalman didn't really help though as it is the TwinTech card which overclocked the best. The higher GPU clock might be due to differences in yields during processing, we might have got lucky there. The memory clock however is quite impressive. TwinTech's move to use 0,8ns RAM on their card surely puts them on top when it comes down to overclocking the memory chips. The only thing which bothers me is the fact that they did not overvolt the GPU instead, since the 9600GT is much more in need of faster GPU/shader clocks (referring to 8800GT specs). Those who think to match a 8800GT, well you may succeed, but some games are really pushing the GPU rendering power and then overclocking your 9600GT won't save you. It does help, no doubt.

+ Slightly higher performance
+ Acceptable noise
+ Dual slot heatsink; lowered GPU temps
+ High overclocking headroom (0,8ns DRAM chips)
+ Power consumption
+ Averaged priced but high/performance ratio
- Does not add much value for money compared to reference 9600 GT

So, being inside the overclocker's mind, what do we remember? Noise? NO! Power consumption? NO! ...

+ High overclocking headroom (0,8ns DRAM chips)?

YES!

This card comes at 700/1100 frequencies out of the box and provides a good playing field for overclocking the memory. Having tested the card on air, Blind decided to take this card to the next level, challenging the world records and trying to set some milestones in 9600GT overclocking.