Connect 3D Radeon 9600XT 

In addition to the card, the box contained a driver disk, a manual the DVI to VGA converter and the S-Video cable.

Also included in the package was a coupon for Half-Life 2 which I can't wait to get. In my own humble opinion, this was one of ATi's best marketing strategies. 

The card itself is somewhat plain looking compared to it's NVidia based counterparts, but as I've often seen here appearances can be deceiving. One thing about the plain-ness of the board is the fact that it's not crowded.

The most prominent feature is the GPU heatsink with the "Powered by ATi" logo. This is also the one feature that strays from ATi's reference board. The reference designed heatsink is larger with sides that flare out whereas this one is a simple fan placed atop the sink adding to the non-crowded look of the board.

The fan is plugged straight into the board and as mentioned before, with ATi's use of the Low K manufacturing process, there is no need for an external power supply.

The memory modules are of the Samsung variety, and after a bit of research, I found that they are the 3.3ns jobbers. Rated at 300MHz (which is 600MHz in the DDR mode stuff) this means that the stock speeds for the memory are already at their theoretical max.

With no cooling on the memory, either passive or active, I don't hold out much hope for a decent overclock on this card. But we'll get to that later so just be patient.

Removal of the heatsink shows us that Connect3D surely believes in the application of thermal paste for good conductivity. Once we cleaned the bottom of the sink off, we can see that not only is the surface nice and smooth, but shiny enough to see some pretty clear details in the reflection.

The last picture before we get to the good stuff, is a shot of the GPU core itself. 

Now, on to the good part, the testing.