Computex 2003 - Day 2: Motherboard and Video Coverage

Gigabyte

As usual, Gigabyte had a wide range of video and motherboard products to show off at Computex. Most of them we’ve already reviewed; various nForce2 Ultra 400, KT600, 865PE, 875P, SiS 655FX, and so on. What we haven’t taken a look at yet is their retail video cards based on ATI’s full line of GPUs; the 9200, 9600, and 9800. However, we’ve already covered these GPUs in the past few months in various technology reviews and previews, but what we haven’t covered is the following unique variation of one of these R3xx cores.

The video care displayed in the above picture is ATI’s 9600 Pro video card outfitted with a specially modified heat-pipe and fan design to accommodate its factory overclocked core clock speed. That’s right, instead of a regular 9600 Pro running at a 400MHz core clock speed, we have an overclocked 9600 Pro that approaches a clock speed of 500MHz at a mere $15 premium. Gigabyte guarantees that this overclock speed will remain stable, but even if you happen to be one of those unlucky users that is experiencing problems with their new “uber” Gigabyte 9600 Pro video card, Gigabyte offers a full 3-year warranty. This means that users will be able to RMA their overclocked 9600 Pro for a brand new one.

I think it’s fair to say that I’m not the only one who is excited to hear about a cheap, reliably overclocked 9600 Pro for their upcoming Half Life 2 machine. :)