XFX PVT94PYDF4 GeForce 9600GT 512MB GDDR3 650MHz PCI Express 2.0 SLI Ready Video Card ( Dual DVI / S-video )

List Price: $199.99 Discount Price: $174.99

Features:

• NVIDIA SLI Ready
• 650Mhz Standard Clock Speed
• Double Lifetime Warranty
• 512MB of 256-bit DDR3 Memory
• Dual Link DVI (Dual Monitor) Support

Customer Reviews:

Scary! [Posted on 2008-04-14]
This graphics card is so good it's scary. First I have to say that I purchased this graphics card because I was building a whole new machine to replace my 6 year old junk heap that could barley run WOW on low settings.

Anyhow, After getting my new machine up and running I was able experience true beauty. I purchased BioShock right after I got the computer built because I wanted something with some intense graphics and let me tell you it was awe inspiring.

My specs:

GFX: XFX PVT94PYDF4 GeForce 9600GT
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
RAM: Crucial 2GB DDR2 PC2-4200 (going to be 4g but one shipment was DOA)
MB: EVGA nForce 780i SLI
OS: Vista Ultimate 64-bit

With all of these components at stock settings I am able to run the game with full on graphics. Even missing half the ram I wanted this Gfx card picks up the slack!

The great performance teamed with a great company and warranty made this the right choice for me. I made sure to get a MoBo compatible with an SLI set up and I will deffinatley be using those extra slots soon as I am definitely going to buy another one of these cards.

Oh one last thing though. I am still using a monitor that only works with VGA, if you are too don't be like me and freak out when you can't find the HDMI to VGA adapter, just lift up the card board at the bottom of the package and waddya know there it is!

Enjoy!

Best performance for the price [Posted on 2008-04-19]
To my surprise, Amazon delivered the card within 4 days after the order was placed even though I used free super saver shipping! Well packed as always. The card went straight in to my PC and I was up and running with no issues whatsoever.

There are countless ravings about the performance of the card so I'm not gonna dwell on that, instead I'll point out a couple of errors in Amazon's listing, which says the card comes bundled with "company of heroes" but it does not. I checked the manufacturer's website and found out that the game bundles come only with the factory overclocked versions of the card.

The heatsink does not come with the pictured cool Geforce decal, instead it has dull black metallic finish, but this is not a big deal (unless that is important to you...)

Couple of technical issues:
The cooling fan makes a lot of noise when the PC is initially turned on but quiets down after a few seconds. I did some research and this seems to be the normal behavior of this card. Make sure you have at least a 400W power supply before plugging the card in (Geforce recommends 400W, XFX recommends 500W), and make sure you have at least a mid tower case before buying the card because it is very long and would not fit in a compact case.

Even though this is a PCI Express 2.0 card, it is backward compatible with PCI Express 1.1 but to take real advantage of the card you'll need a newer motherboard with PCI Express 2.0 (which virtually doubles the data exchange rate), and you should have the CPU power and RAM to back this thing up. Don't expect great performance if you plug this into a 3 year old Celeron or a Sempron with 256MB RAM...

Make sure to download the latest drivers from the nvidia website, the cd that comes with the package has older drivers.

Simply put, the 9600GT provides the best performance/price ratio for any graphics card out there today, and coupled with the double lifetime warranty and a $30 rebate, XFX seems to be one of the best choises.

Great super graphics card for the price! [Posted on 2008-04-20]
The graphics card gives incredible graphics, marvelous colors and with the 512 MB dedicated memory, quite efficient.

No game as advertised with this card! [Posted on 2008-04-30]
I received this card today! It does everything as advertised. 3 star review is based upon the fact I have no company of heros game. I called customer service and spoke with a man named louie, who was very polite and recognized the promotional offer online but could offer no solution. Who is supposed to supply this game amazon or the one of many suppliers? Can anyone explain this? Also as mentioned in a previous review, my card too came with the lame silver sticker. No cool graphics sticker as advertised. I've had descent service with amazon in the past but am left with a bad taste in my mouth on this one. Please do a better job on advertising amazon. Many small leaks unattended will sink a great ship.

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