The market for video cards is dominated by the mainstream video cards with cards in the under $120 range selling like hotcakes as the economy has hurt the high-end enthusiast market noticeably. One consequence of this shift to the lower end of the spectrum is that many cards are not competing with the intended competition but cards that offer higher performance and lower profit margins to the video chip companies.
So where a company with a lot of stock of older cards that are not selling as well as could be expected go within this market? They differentiate the cards with better cooling, higher clock speeds and target different markets with their cards. Gigabyte is a company that has a long history of building video cards, motherboards and other computer accessories. Today's review is on an older card, the 9600GT which Gigabyte has modified to run silently and coolly with higher clock speeds. It should be an interesting review as the 9600GT was released a couple of years ago by NVIDIA.
