XFX GeForce 9600 GSO 680M XXX Edition

Overclocking

We overclocked XFX’s GeForce 9600 GSO 680M XXX Edition graphics card using RivaTuner v2.11 to increase clock speeds and Crysis to check that the card was stable at the higher speeds. We increased the frequencies by 5MHz at a time, testing for visual corruption and throttling with Crysis under DirectX 10 at each incremental boost.

As a quick reminder, the XFX 9600 GSO XXX Edition comes clocked at 680MHz core, 1,700MHz shader and 1,900MHz (effective) on the memory.

After a few hours of tweaking, performance and stability testing, we managed to get the card to a healthy and stable 739MHz core, 1,845MHz shader and 2,032MHz (effective) memory clock. This represents an 8.6 percent increase on the core and shader clocks, which were left in ‘linked’ mode, and just under a seven percent increase in memory performance.

Consider the fact that this card is already heavily overclocked—by almost 25 percent on the core and shader clock domains—this overclock is fairly respectable. Had this card been a reference-clocked card, we wouldn’t be as content as we are with a seven percent overclock – if you take the 25 percent factory overclock out of the equation, the overclocking experience we had with this card was fairly mediocre.

Final Thoughts…

When we first had a look at XFX’s GeForce 9600 GSO XXX Edition during our initial look at AMD’s new ATI Radeon HD 4670, we said that the card was too expensive to really be a competitor with the AMD’s new card. However, since then the pricing has dropped by around £10, which makes it only £5 dearer than most Radeon HD 4670 cards on the market today.

With just £5 between the two cards, the purchasing choice is almost a no brainer, unless you are strictly limited to spending £60 and no more. XFX’s card offers quite a bit more performance in the games tested here and seems fairly well-suited to current games on the market at 1,280 x 1,024 in particular. At a stretch, playing games at 1,680 x 1,050 is possible, but you’ll need to make some sacrifices in games like Crysis especially.

Unfortunately though, we were able to find one (yes, one) Radeon HD 4670 for just under £55 – Force3D’s Radeon HD 4670 is available on Ebuyer for £54.99 (inc. VAT). This makes things difficult for us because £10 is quite a large difference in price in the mainstream market – XFX’s 9600 GSO 680M XXX Edition costs 18 percent more.

Of course, we could talk about how great the Radeon HD 4850 is here, and why you should look to stretch to one of those if at all possible, but you’re going to have to spend twice as much as these cards to get one. That takes it out of the equation completely, as far as we’re concerned – they’re gunning for completely different markets.

If Force3D’s Radeon HD 4670 stock dries up and no other AMD partner offers the 4670 at under £55, then the decision is a no brainer – spend the extra £5 or so and get the XFX card because it’s well worth it in that situation. However, if more AMD partners drop their 4670 pricing to under £55, both cards look like decent choices – it’ll depend on how much you’ve got to spend at the end of the day. We’d recommend stretching your budget as far as possible if you can, because the additional performance delivered by XFX's GeForce 9600 GSO 680M XXX Edition is arguably worth an extra tenner.

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