ASUS EN9600GT Matrix

There is no spoon.

With another month rolling past, we received yet another 9600GT. This card has seen huge popularity with gamers who want good performance on the cheap, and it’s proved to be relatively overclockable too. So when ASUS sent us this decidedly funky-looking card, we knew we just had to have another look.

The main drawcard of the Matrix is right above this text. Go on, have a look at it. We can wait. From the dual-heatpipes leading to the internal cooling fins, to the curved heatpipe with fins around the circumference and a fan in the middle, to the imposing black and silver colour scheme, this is a card that looks like it means business. The cooler is drenched in quality and will look bloody amazing in any windowed case, even managing to look as visually impressive from the top as it does from the front. But this cooler isn’t just for dead sexy looks, it also does a great job of cooling the card – idling at 35 degrees and load at only 44 degrees, an impressively slight nine degree increase!

This does come at a sacrifice of noise, however, idling at a rather loud 63.4dBA and hitting 68.8dBA at load. You would definitely want to have headphones with this card, to drown out the racket.

Built around the G94 core running at stock frequencies of 650MHz for the core and 900MHz for the memory, this card also has a 256-bit memory bus feeding 512MB of GDDR3 memory, which should afford you plenty of room to play most games, and even have a play around with texture packs (if you’re into that kind of thing). This core is extremely overclockable too, and with the cooler doing an excellent job of keeping temperatures in check you can expect to push this card very far – and keep it there.

Performance in gaming is quite good, giving you a decent playing experience with the settings as per our usual benchmark, and even better if you tweak them down a bit. The G94 core does chug a bit during some areas in both games, but is for the most part pretty smooth. Both 3DMark benchmark programs are quite smooth as well, returning some nice scores.

The bundle is quite normal, supplying only the usual cables. The back of the card already has a hardware HDMI port, as well as optical out, but we’d like to have seen a HDMI to DVI converter included for those with existing dual-monitor setups who would like to keep it simple. There is no game included.

While newer cards have since come onto the market, this card is still a tempting offer that can deliver good performance and overclockability.