iChill GeForce 9600 GT ZEROtherm Hurricane review - 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.

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.

	GeForce 8800 Ultra GeForce 8800 GTX GeForce 8800 GT GeForce 9600 GT Inno3D iChill edition Shader Processors 128 128 112 64 64 Core Clock (MHz) 612 575 600 650 720 Shader Clock (MHz) 1500 1350 1500 1625 1600 Memory Clock (MHz) 1080 900 900 900 972 Memory amount 768 MB 768 MB 512 MB 512 MB 512 MB Memory Interface 384-bit 384-bit 256-bit 256-bit 256-bit HDCP Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Two Dual link DVI Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes