Today's tested 9600 GT cards from all manufacturers will be shown nice and orderly in alphabetical order as we are dealing with a lot of board-partner today, and I love you all equally !!

The one exception is of course the NVIDIA reference card you just were able to see; as reference cards go first. Next in line is BFG. The fine people from BFG always try to do a little extra, and therefore they are releasing a GeForce 9600 GT OC model as standard.

That's right mate. For roughly the price of the regular GeForce 9600 GT you buy the OC version. OC obviously refers towards overclock and therefore you can expect a mild overclock at standard. Now it isn't much but BFG will set the core frequency of the GPU at 675 MHz for you. However, 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 now locked at 1700 MHz. The memory frequency however remain standard at 1800 MHz. Other then this you can expect a reference based graphics card with the standard (slim design) single slot cooler.

Included in the box you'll find:

• GeForce 9600 GT 512 MB OC model
• Driver CD
• HDTV block (3-way RCA component)
• 6-pin to Molex power cable
• manual / quick install guide
• VGA->DVI dongle (two)

No additional software is included. You receive the hardware needed to get started & drivers, that's pretty much it; the usual BFG bundle. As stated you will get a slightly yet conservative speedbump on the core frequency of the G94 graphics processor. Standard it's 650 MHz, BFG has pre-clocked it at 675 MHz for you. And as mentioned, increasing the core MHz also means an increase in the shader domain frequency and that's the sweet spot for your performance (it's where the magic happens). (Ed: the what?)

But .. here comes the bang for your well invested buck; to top it off, BFG makes it a really nice deal by offering you a Lifetime Warranty if you reside in the USA and 10 years in Europe or outside the USA. And at this price-level that's a mighty nice investment people. I mean who still uses a mid-range graphics card to game that is ten years old ...?

Very nice, let's have a look.

Here we can see that bundle ... it would be really nice to see the 3-way RCA component adapter removed and instead have a HDMI converter included. Heck, idea for BFG: if it's too costly ... dump the 3-way RCA cable and one DVI dongle.

Funny little story: do you see the "Darth Maul'ish" evil looking guy at the right side of the box? The last time I spoke with our BFG contact he told me that this figure is going to be some sort of cartoon. And with each new product release in the advertising and on the box, the character is moving into a story-line. I like that; it's humorous.