Features & Specifications

The Palit 9600 GSO 768MB comes with a fantastic feature set, and should do well for both videos and gaming.

Features

• Full Microsoft DirectX 10.0 Shader Model 4.0 support
• Dual Dual-link DVI support 2560x1600 resolution displays
• nVidia PureVideo HD Technology
• Certified for Microsoft Windows Vista
• nVidia SLI ready
• HDMI function through DVI-HDMI dongle and SPDIF cable
• HDCP capable

Unlike the Radeon HD3870 Ultimate and Toxic, the GeForce 9600 GSO doesn't support DirectX 10.1. This isn't a giant issue, as nVidia is apparently waiting for the next big release of DirectX, and not an incremental release.

Specifications

• Bus interface: PCI Express 2.0 Support
• Memory: 768MB
• Memory Interface: 192 bit
• Core Clock: 600MHz
• Memory Clock: 1800MHz (900x2)
• Shader Clock:  1500MHz
• RAMDACs: 400 MHz
• NVIDIA® unified architecture with GigaThread™ technology
• Full Microsoft® DirectX® 10 Shader Model 4.0 support
• PCI Express 2.0 Support
• 16x full-screen anti-aliasing
• True 128-bit floating point high dynamic-range (HDR) lighting
• NVIDIA® Quantum Effects™ physics processing technology
• Two dual-link DVI outputs support two 2560x1600 resolution displays
• NVIDIA® PureVideo™ HD technology
• OpenGL® 2.1 support
• NVIDIA ForceWare® Unified Driver Architecture (UDA)
• Built for Microsoft® Windows Vista™
• NVIDIA® Lumenex™ Engine
• NVIDIA® nView® Multi-Display Technology
• Discrete, Programmable Video Processor
• Hardware Decode Acceleration
• Spatial-Temporal De-Interlacing
• High-Quality Scaling
• Inverse Telecine (3:2 & 2:2 Pulldown Correction)
• Bad Edit Correction
• Video Color Correction
• Integrated SD and HD TV Output
• Noise Reduction
• Edge Enhancement
• HDMI function through DVI-HDMI dongle and SPDIF cable

Let's compare some of these specifications to those of the base 9600 GSO.

• 768MB of RAM compared to 384MB
• 600MHz Core Clock compared to 550MHz
• 1800MHz Core Clock compared to 1600MHz
• 1500MHz Shader Clock compared to 1375MHz

Hopefully I'll find a large performance increase over the base model 9600 GSO, and maybe performance close to that of the Radeon HD3870.