  In
lieu of today's "Do It Yourself" overclocking, "factory overclocked"
has a nice ring to it, especially for some who like to have others
do the hard work and allow you to focus on the fun stuff - games!
With the introduction of the EVGA GeForce 9600 GT SSC Edition, an
added plus has been thrown to the fray - high performance at a
mid-range price; translation - a whole lot of bang for the buck.
Previously considered a competitor to the Radeon HD 3850 video card,
the price and performance ratio of the 9600 GT is so good that the
3870 is now looked upon as a more accurate contender. We'll take a
quick look at the EVGA GeForce 9600 GT SSC Edition - currently the
highest clocked GeForce 9600 GT.
Performance-wise, the EVGA 9600 GT SSC has nice specs that
should grab the attention of those in the market for a new gaming
card. Memory bandwidth on the 9600GT is on a 256-bit memory bus with
a rock solid 740MHz core clock speed, and a blazing memory clock of
1950MHz (effective). You'll be impressed with the normal
temperatures, despite the huge clock speed. The GeForce 9600 GT SSC
is a single-slot solution that employs a metal faceplate enclosure
to assist in cooling the GPU and memory. The stability helps provide
a memory bandwidth of a robust 62.4GB/second - very nice. The shader
clock alone is 210MHz higher (1835MHz) than what the standard
GeForce 9600 GT reference card brings. The combination of a higher
fill rate and a higher memory bandwidth, along with the
modifications to the GeForce 8xxx core, makes the GeForce 9600 GT
quite a performer. The EVGA GeForce 9600 GT SSC will offer you heaps
of functionality; but more so, will give you the opportunity to play
modern games at really good frame-rates.
 EVGA
believes its feature set of the SSC Edition will make it the right
choice for budget-minded gamers. A new feature of the 9600 GT SSC is
the ability to accelerate the decoding of two video streams
simultaneously. NVIDIA calls this feature Dual-Stream Decode. This
allows the user to watch a movie and the
 director
commentary at the same time as an example of this feature. Dynamic
Contrast changes the contrast in a video if the driver determines
that a frame of video has poor contrast in comparison to the other
frames. Dynamic Color Enhancement can adjust the red, green and blue
tones in a picture to provide sharper colors without
over-saturation. The GeForce 9600 GT will be above the 8600 GTS, in
terms of features, price and performance; a combo EVGA hopes you
won't pass up.
This overclocked wonder should give the monetary-challenged
gamer a reason to beam with FPS glee. It seems a new standard for
price/performance has now been set. Come and check our selection and
see why we offer the best service and prices.
Henry L.
Staff Technology Writer
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