Introduction

It seems we're right on time for another pointless release of a graphics card that is slightly better or slightly worse than what is on the market already, whilst carrying with it a price tag pretty similar to that of what's already available. Did that confuse you? - The thing is, these graphics card releases from NVIDIA are becoming nothing short of a joke.

The latest graphics card to come out and confuse everyone is the 9600 GSO, this being 8800 GSs twin brother. I don't mean twin in the sense that they kind of look pretty similar, but in the identical sense. This IS an 8800 GS! The thing is that not a lot of people know about the 8800 GS with limited companies choosing to jump on board (ASUS and XFX); it really didn't get much recognition.

You combine this with the fact that it was kind of slotted in when the 8800 series was getting a confusing revamp where a 512MB 8800 GTS became better than the 640MB and the 8800GT became better than the standard 8800 GTS.

If NVIDIAs plan was to confuse the market, they've done a great job. What's even worse is that the X600 series of cards like the 7600GT and 8600GT have always been pretty horrible cards for serious gamers. Now however, they are more like mid high-end cards. While this might sound good, pricing is all over the place and it's just really difficult to know what graphics card you should get.

I've actually tested the 9600 GSO; I know how I'm going to wrap this up before I even wrote this introduction, and it's a real doozy. Before we get too far ahead of ourselves though, let's find out exactly what the card looks like, what Palit has done with it and if the package stands out in any way.