Image Quality

Below is a non-compressed screen shot from NFS: Pro Street and Unreal Tournament 3.  Resolution was set to 1600 with eye candy set to max to include max FSAA for NFS and 1920 with all settings, FSAA included, tapped out.  Visual quality becomes a subjective thing at this level.  Rather than my tell you, see for yourself below. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder you know.
 

Overclocking

Before I went to jack up the Inno3D iChill 9600 GT Hurricane, I thought to myself 'what a shame, a killer GPU cooler and no RAM sinks.'  In pushing the card by trial and error we finally were able to find our max overclock free of ALL visual anomalies.  811MHz on the core was an absolutely stellar gain.  Even the naked memory gave us an extra 102MHz.  Remember the reference specs for the 9600 GT are 650MHz on the core and 900MHz on the memory.  Inno3D has laid in a factory overclock (while still offering a full three year warranty) to take their card to 720MHz on the core and 970MHz on the memory.  Our results show a 29% gain over reference speed and an 11% gain over Inno3D's factory overclocked core.  Catch your breath!

Our overclocking gains were such that it seemed un-American to not run Crysis once more with the card all pumped up.  Screen resolution was set to 1024 with all settings tapped out and FSAA turned off.

Kapow!  Very nice gains indeed.  We still didn't overtake the 8800 GT but we did cut the margin it had before in half.  That's a lot of performance for under $200.

Noise level

At all times, the card's fan speed was left at automatic within the NVidia control panel.  At no time did the fan become annoying or exceed being barely audible.  Our testing was done in an open rack set up today.  On dropping the card in a system installed in our LAN box (Zalman GT1000) the card was completely inaudible.

Conclusion

The only thing more impressive than the level NVidia has raised the midrange market to is the bar that Inno3D has set within this group for the rest of the field.  A midrange card offering extreme performance with a killer cooling option in the Hurricane included.  Remember that the Hurricane is a $45 cooler by itself and adding that on says a lot for the value of the Inno3D card.  While we do not have a firm MSRP at this time, from Inno3D's track record I fully expect the card to price out around $180.

Image quality and sound level were both excellent.  The overclocking ability of this card coupled with the Zerotherm Hurricane cooler really proved itself as outstanding.  The entire package is noteworthy from a bang per buck perspective but the cooler and overclocking ability of Inno3D's new "midrange" card really puts it over the top.  The Inno3D 9600 GT Hurricane iChill is a top pick for any midrange shopper as it redefines the performance and value for this market segment.

Pros

• Great performance

• The Zerotherm Hurricane cooler rocks

• Quiet fan operation

• DirectX 10 Ready

• Factory overclocked with a warranty

• SLI Ready

• Very overclockable

• Gold plated DVI outputs

• Dual DVI

• HDTV Ready

• Three year warranty

Cons

• Exact pricing and availability unknown at this time

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Pg 1 - Introduction
Pg 2 - The Card
Pg 3 - Hurricane Cooler
Pg 4 - Testing / STALKER
Pg 5 - UT3 / Crysis
Pg 6 - Image Quality / Overclocking / Conclusion