Customer Reviews

PNY GeForce 9600GT 512 MB DDR3 PCI-Express Graphics Card VCG96512GXPB

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This card is just awesome for the price. It's super fast. It's ridiculously cheap. It runs cool. It doesn't require a lot of power. (I'm running it on a Dell with the stock 305 watt PSU) What else can you ask for? If you're looking for a graphics upgrade, and don't want to spend a fortune, then this card is a winner.

I purchased this card as an upgrade from an ATI X850XT in my Inspiron 530 desktop. The power of the card is noticeable even in graphics intensive web browsing. My Windows Vista performance score went from 4.9 in graphics to 5.9 (the max) and I haven't had any issues with driver conflicts. The card does spin up to full speed until loading Windows (to load the drivers), but it isn't really that loud anyway. Once in Windows, the card is effectively silent. To offer a comparison, my IBM Thinkpad Laptop is louder than my entire desktop (Intel Q6600 with stock cooler, case fan) side by side. The card is significantly quieter than stock cards I've owned in the past, and just as quiet as my X850XT with an AFTERMARKET Zalman GPU cooler.

On a separate note, the card is quite long. It is precisely 9.15 inches from back of case to the end of the card. Make sure you have that much room in your case and won't be blocked by hard drives or otherwise.

I finally jumped from an AGP bus to PCI-E. I upgraded from a PNY 6800GS unlocked to GT spec's, while that card was great this card is unbelievable! I now play all my games at max resolution, everything set to high, ultra high etc. No lag, skips dropping frames etc. Some of the games I have played;

Call of Duty 4 everything maxed
Battle for Middle Earth 2, maxed
Crysis, high settings (no skips jumps or crashing)!
Medieval II Total war: Kingdoms expansion, all settings maxed
Oblivion, no problem what so ever.

Before my current upgraded system, I could never play games at max resolutions or ultra high settings, games have never looked or played so well. Its like a whole new gaming experiance, I find myself pulling older games out just to see how they look. (Far Cry, Pirates!, Rome Total war just to name a few).

If you have an older Geforce or Radeon. You cannot go wrong with a 9600GT for the performance and price.

My latest (budget)gaming rig:
Intel E6600 Core 2 Duo @ 2.5ghz (got as a gift)
Mach Speed P4MST-890 MB
2 Gb of Centon DDR2 ram Dual Channel (Budget)
PNY 9600GT 512mb DDR3 PCI-E With PNY $40.00 rebate and Amazon reward points only $80.00!
Raptor 36GB 10,000rpm SATA (C, Windows drive)
WD 160GB 7,200rpm SATA (Gaming drive)
Soundblaster Audigy EX
Windows XP Pro SP2
Samsung 226BW 22" Flat screen monitor

My wife was complaining that The Sims 2 with all expansions under Vista would get slow and laggy anytime it snowed or rained in the game. In fact, it would get almost unplayable to where she turned snow and rain off completely. TS2 is harder on the CPU than video card, and the one I had was very fast to begin with (by 2007 standards), it was the BFG GeForce 7900 GS OC 256MB PCI Express. Anyhow, I was doubtful a new video card would really help, but I couldn't resist the after-rebate price on this card so I went ahead and bought it. It's a night and day difference, zero lag and super fast with all settings maxed, anti-aliasing/smoothing maxed, and resolution set to my monitor's native 1680x1050. The card itself is quiet and the fan is variable speed temperature controlled. It is a long card and a tight fit, with the power connector plugged in, it extends into the hard drive bay, so it's a good thing I didn't have a drive in that particular bay. I use DVI and the text and graphics are crisp as can be. It only has a 3-year warranty, but I think that should be more than long enough for anyone who likes to stay semi-current.

Right now is a really great time to upgrade your video card if you haven't already. the Nvidia 9600GT series of cards is a worthwhile upgrade for just about any card more than a year or so old. If you've got any 6000 series or 7000 series Nvidia card, this is an upgrade. If you've got an 8000 series less than an 8800 this is an upgrade.

This card is just a little slower than an 8800GT (with at least 512MB, not the crippled 256MB versions), and priced appropriately. It is on par with ATI's 3800 series cards, and a slower than the ATI's new 4800 series cards that just came out. All of these cards I just mentioned will play ANY recent video games with all of your eye-candy set to High at very playable framerates, and many games (especially older ones) you can set to Very High settings.

At the time of this writing, you can find all of these cards for less than two hundred bucks, with this 9600GT and ATI's 3800 series at the low end of the price spectrum for as low as one hundred after rebates and such if you shop around a bit. Really, this is a great time to buy a video card if you are at all in the market for one (or might be in the near future).

For the people looking for numbers, on my system Vista gives it a 5.9 for both Graphics and Gaming Graphics. 3DMark06 gives it a score of 11200 at stock speed, and slightly overclocked it went up to 12400. Overclocking takes just a few moments with Rivatuner software if you so choose, but even at stock speeds this is plenty fast.

The only things to watch out for is the size of the card (it is fairly long), and make sure you have an adequate power supply. You don't need a HUGE power supply, but you just need a good one and not a generic cheapo one. It requires a separate PCIE power input. This isn't anything out of the ordinary, and any other card in this range you get will need the same thing. The fan is quite loud at startup, but goes down to near silent once the drivers load up.

My system is a Q6600 (overclocked to 3.2Ghz), 8GB RAM, 3x Western Digital 640GB hard drives, OCZ StealthStream 600W power supply, Asus P5B Deluxe motherboard.

I got this card on sale for $110 and never regretted it. The 9600 is the best mainstream gaming card you can get. I had no trouble playing Assassin's Creed DX10 with over 30 fps at 1680*1050. If you want to play Crysis smoothly at that resolution, I suggest you go with the 8800gt or gts. The 64 stream processors can hold you back at high resolutions, but running two (SLI) will fix that up. For you overclockers, I got mine to 750 core, 2100 memory, and about 1800 shaders on stock cooling. People that like silent computers will be happy to hear that the fan only spins when it gets over 60C I think, mine doesnt even go that high when playing a game. You may need ntune for that though.

This card is amazing, plug it in and go. I have a Dell Inspiron Vista Home premium with a stock 350w power supply. I thought it would not be enough but it works NO PROBLEM! For what its worth the card increased my Vista Experience index from a 5.5 to a overall 5.6. I mean every category is 5.9 but the Memory Ops is 5.6 and that lowers the total. My machine is a 2.4ghz quad core with 4gb of ram. Its like top of the line.
It breaths new life into older games like Far Cry and after some adjusting FC2 (very high settings)60fps! looks pretty good too.
I did have to up date the drivers but no biggie.
I paid $83 including overnight shipping.
"Folks Try My Product"?

This card is really good as it's price. But i have a complain, If you see the large size display of this products then you found that the box show with a "bonus game inside". Which is not included.

And it's true there is no text information about bonus game. But please change the box image.

Otherwise till now i am happy with this card.

Hope you also enjoy it.

Fits into Inspiron 530 and runs low 40's C idle and never gets hotter than 55 degrees C with stock cooling. It did raise the MB and CPU temps about 2-3 degrees C but that's probably due to it blocking airflow. 8800GT's are almost this cheap now but will run hotter. Got 9500+ on 3DMark with E6550, 3GB RAM.

I got this for a good friend of mine because he needed something that will not break the bank and had good power. It plays almost every game on high with very good frame rates. Plus it works at 650Mhz out of the box just like the 180$ superclocked models ! Just make sure you have the latest driver, get it from www.nvidia.com don't use the one that comes with the GPU. Also make sure you have proper cooling inside your case. The price + Performance = good GPU.