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To measure power usage, we used a Kill A Watt P4400 power meter. Note that the above numbers represent the power drain for the entire benchmarking system, not just the video cards themselves. For the 'idle' readings we measured the power drain from the desktop, with no applications running; for the 'load' situation, we ran a demanding part of 3DMark06.

The Palit 9600GSO Sonic requires one 6-pin PCIE power connector, and your going to want a 450W or higher power supply to keep your video card and computer happy.

As for power usage, the 9600 GSO seems take a more power than you might expect. Idling, the card almost took as much juice as the EN8800GTS 512MB, which is a surprise.

One more thing on the topic of power -- like other Sonic models, this Palit card has a 3-phase power solution, which basically means that the GPU is feed a steadier stream of power, resulting in a longer life, and a better overclock, for your card.

So many cards, so many options

It's a very tight market between the $100 and $200 mark right now, and the Palit 9600GSO faces some tough competition, but manages to fit farily well into the current video card landscape.

This video card is a bit of paradox -- sort of puzzling in some ways. While it has less memory bandwidth available than the 8800 GT, it has a reasonable amount of steam processors, and is set to respectable clock speeds. This combination of specifications leads it to out-perform some more expensive cards, in some games. For a video card that will retail for $139.99, sometimes it outperformed, and sometimes it underperformed, its primary competition: the HD3850, HD3870, 8800GT, and 9600GT. If you are really into one particular game, you might want to check out the charts and judge for yourself if this card is for you.

In comparison to other 9600GSO cards, the Palit Sonic edition looks like a good deal. While this is only the first 9600 GSO that we have tested, judging from prices featured on some major online e-tailers, the Palit 9600GSO Sonic 768MB is sitting comfortably at the $139 price mark. With the complete bundle (besides the awful manual), the effective cooler, and reasonable overclock, this 9600GSO is selling at the price many other 384MB 9600GSO's are selling at.

Speaking of the 384MB configuration of the 9600GSO, Palit will be releasing a Sonic with 384MB of memory, and selling it for $119.99 initally. If that card overclocks as well as the 768MB cards seem to, it could be a excellent budget -- yet still quite fast -- gaming card. While 256MB is not really enough memory to satisfy high-resolution gaming, 384MB (for the time being at least), is an acceptable amount. I would not expect there to be much real-world performance differences at all between the 384MB and 768MB models. However, a possible exception to that claim would be that the 384MB and 768MB cards are from different batches of cards completely -- which isn't likely, but is possible.

But back to the card at hand.

Really, the situation with the 9600GSO is fairly straight -foward: it's all about price. This conclusion is focused heavily on price -- but probably, for most people looking for a card at $139, they want to know whether or not, in the end, the Palit 9600GSO Sonic is a good deal or not. For most consumers, the answer is yes: this card offers a good bang-for-the-buck; however, for those that love bargain shopping, and looking for deals, a patient gamer may be able to pick up a HD3870, or perhaps even a 8800GT, for the same price -- or even less -- than what this card will initally retail for -- -- and in many gaming situations, and especially at higher resolutions, the horsepower of the HD3870s and 8800 GT cards will be greater than offered by the 9600GSO.

The problem here is that although a newly released video card, the 9600GSO is exactly a new card, as detailed on the first page of this review. So while the price of $139 is a good intial offering for this product, it has to compete with in a fierce buyer's market right now for video cards. This last AMD/NVIDIA battleround was a particular doozy; and right now, its a real cut-throat market for video cards. (Which, of course, benefits the PC gamer!)  

But there is one catch to all of this -- overclocking. This particular Palit 9600GSO tested was an excellent overclocker. While results unfortuantely may vary from video card to the next, judging from other review sources, it does not seem that my particular card was any exception. Going from the already overclocked clocks of 600 / 1500 / 1800 (core, shader,memory)  to 745 / 1862 / 1958 was very impressive -- even considering that this card is, in many respects, a laser-neutered 8800 GT. With not much effort at all you can really boost the performance of the Palit 9600GSO Sonic -- and with every dollar counting in the sub-$150 dollar range, you can turn this card into better deal compared to the other cards in this price range, such as inexpensive HD3870s.

While this card is probably not the best deal for everyone, for some people, the Palit 9600GSO Sonic could make a good fit.