4 - The iChill edition & bundle
Inno3D GeForce 9600 GT 512MB 'iChill' edition
When we leave the reference discussion behind us, we land at Inno3D's offering. For a slightly above standard price compared to the regular GeForce 9600 GT, you can buy the iChill ZEROtherm edition of this card.
First off; if you consider this precise model be aware of the fact that there are a couple of things you need to understand though. Be sure you purchase the right product as Inno3D has a lot of different product types (SKUs) based on the 9600 GT in their line-up right now. This is SKU C9600GT92-H5GTCD. And let's have a look at it.
See, there is this little thing; the product comes with a cooler that you have to apply yourself. Yes, a (DIY) Do-It-Yourself kit. It's really a fairly easy job which we'll show you in a minute. But obviously you need to be comfortable doing such a thing.
Secondly, the cooler is massive. It will literally eat up three slots, which quite frankly is a little silly. So please be aware of that. It's a bit of a tradeoff though, as the cooler is just fantastic, but obviously we'll show you why that is over the next dozen pages.
The iChill edition also is a faster clocked product; you can expect a mild overclock as standard in addition to a free (full GRAW2) game. Inno3D will set the core frequency of the GPU at 720 MHz for you. However, normally a nice side effect is a substantial increase of the clocks in the shader domain (default 1625 MHz) as they will overclock as well, and that frequency is down-clocked at 1600 MHz for whatever vague reason.
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff Display adapter information
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$0000000000 Description : NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT
$0000000001 Vendor ID : 10de (NVIDIA)
$0000000002 Device ID : 0622
$0000000003 Location : bus 1, device 0, function 0
$0000000004 Bus type : PCIE
$000000000f PCIE link width : 16x supported, 16x selected
$0000000009 Base address 0 : cc000000 (memory range)
$000000000a Base address 1 : b0000000 (memory range)
$000000000b Base address 2 : none
$000000000c Base address 3 : ca000000 (memory range)
$000000000d Base address 4 : none
$000000000e Base address 5 : 00009c00 (I/O range)
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff NVIDIA specific display adapter information
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$0100000000 Graphics core : G94 revision A1 (64sp)
$0100000001 Hardwired ID : 0620 (ROM strapped to 0622)
$0100000002 Memory bus : 256-bit
$0100000003 Memory type : DDR3 (RAM configuration 00)
$0100000004 Memory amount : 524288KB
$0100000100 Core clock domain 0 : 720.000MHz
$0100000101 Core clock domain 1 : 1600.000MHz
$0100000006 Memory clock : 972.000MHz (1944.000MHz effective)
$0100000007 Reference clock : 25.000MHz/27.000MHz
The memory frequency has also been boosted a little to 1944 MHz (effective). Other than this you can expect a reference based (PCB) graphics card.
Included in the box you'll find:
- GeForce 9600 GT 512 MB iChill model
- ZeroTherm cooler
- Nuts / bolts
- thermal paste
- Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 (full game)
- Driver CD
- HDTV block (3-way RCA component)
- SVideo cable
- 6-pin to Molex power cable
- manual / quick install guide
- VGA->DVI dongle (two).
Overall an extremely good package, but the one thing I would like to see in there is a HDMI adapter. For all I care, rip out the analog video cables if that saves Inno3D some money, and then include that adapter. It's 2008 guys and everybody is going digital.
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This actually is a really good bundle. You receive all the hardware needed to get started, drivers and a game. This is good value.
As stated you will get a nice speedbump on the core frequency of the G94 graphics processor & it's memory. The product comes at a suggested sales price of $199 USD and will carry a 2 year warranty.
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