The GeForce 9600 GT products are based on a 64 shader processors based GPU, it comes with 512MB of GDDR3 memory, on a 256-bit memory bus. The 'default slash reference' core and memory speeds are 650MHz and 900MHz, respectively. For the real Guru's; the shader domain is clocked at 1625 MHz. The total memory bandwidth is 57.6GBs with a texture fill rate of 20.8 billion pixels per second.

The OCX version takes that up a pretty significant notch -- The Core frequency is clocked at 725 MHz, the shaders at 1850 and the memory at 972. That's overall quite a lot and should account for an additional 15% of performance.

The GPU, under the new codename G94 is a DirectX 10, OpenGL 2.1, Shader Model 4.0 product designed for PCI Express 2.0. It's fabricated at 65nm, though reportedly some 55nm versions have been spotted as well. The GPU has 505 Million transistors and as stated has 64 unified shader processors, binding to 16 ROPs.

The G94 GPU based cards can peak at 90 Watts power consumption and will therefore require a power supply with at least 400W and 26A on the entire 12V rail, it will also require a 6-pin PCI-Express connector as the card will surpass 75 Watts. Expect the BFG GeForce 9600 GT OCX to retail for rougly 125 USD, and as our tests will show .. that's a lot of value.

The 9600 features two dual-link HDCP enabled DVI-I outputs. Both HDMI and DVI support HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) which will be a requirement for protected content. In the long run; the card would support DisplayPort connectors fine as well, this obviously being board-partner dependant.

The card itself has a green reference based design, yet with ram heatsinks and a ZeroTHERM cooling solution, which is awesome. Let's have a peek at what BFG throws in the box in addition to the graphics card:

• GeForce 9600 GT OCX model
• Driver CD
• HDTV block (3-way RCA component)
• 6-pin to Molex power cable
• manual / quick install guide
• VGA->DVI dongle