The chaps over at Digit-Life have reviewed the NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT which is based on company's newest G94 GPU. This new card  ranks in between the 8800 GT and the 8600 GTS. The GPU itself differs from the G92 only by fewer unified processors and texture units, bringing the 256-bit bus into the sub-$200 price range.

Let's analyze some of the architectural changes in the G9x one more time. Texture units in the G94 are exactly as the ones in the G84/G86 and the G92. They can look up twice as many bilinear filtered texture samples as the G80. But 32 texture units in the GeForce 9600 GT will not work faster in real applications than 32 units in the GeForce 8800 GTX only because of higher GPU frequencies. It may happen only with disabled trilinear and anisotropic filtering, which is a rare situation, only in those algorithms that use unfiltered lookups, e.g. parallax mapping. According to NVIDIA, another advantage of the G9x, and the GeForce 9600 GT in particular, is a new compression technology implemented in ROPs. It's 15% more efficient than the one used in previous GPUs. Perhaps, they are caused by those architectural modifications in the G9x, which should provide higher efficiency of the 256-bit memory bus versus 320/384-bit ones described in previous articles. There won't be a big difference in real applications. Even according to NVIDIA, new ROPs are just 5% as fast in most cases.

>BFG GeForce 9600 GT OC 512MB PCI-E is a reference card (manufactured by NVIDIA's orders, BFG just buys these cards) with slightly increased frequencies. The company gives a 10-year warranty for its products (it replies to messages of private users and can replace a defective product - you can read the details on the vendor's web site). Unfortunately, it's not that easy to find BFG products in our stores so far.

ECS GeForce 9600 GT Accelero Edition 512MB PCI-E is manufactured by ECS. Besides, it's equipped with a unique cooling system. It's the best card among today's contenders, except for its frequencies. Unfortunately, these cards are extremely rare. Let's hope they will be imported in larger volumes.

Forsa GeForce 9600 GT 512MB PCI-E is also a reference card (it's manufactured by NVIDIA's orders at third-party plants). I have nothing to add. Just compare the prices and choose a card. If the price is adequate, it will be a good choice, even though the only authentic Forsa here is the box.

Galaxy GeForce 9600 GT Overclocked 512MB PCI-E is manufactured by own strength, it's also equipped with a unique cooler. Last time we had a lot of gripes with this device, but this modification has all its problems fixed. The cooler has become noiseless and very efficient. Yep, the card takes up two slots now, but it's not a problem anymore. Besides, it operates at increased frequencies.

Point Of View GeForce 9600 GT 512MB PCI-E is a reference card (the card is bought from NVIDIA), so I have nothing to add. You should compare prices, because it has a standard bundle. However, graphics cards from this vendor are not very often available in stores.

Zotac GeForce 9600 GT AMP! Edition 512MB PCI-E is also a reference card. They are manufactured at PC Partner plants - Zotac's parent company. But this is a very interesting product � it operates at very high frequencies, so it can even catch up and outperform the 8800 GT in a number of tests.