BFG 8800GT OCX & 9600GT OCX Video Card Review

A Closer Look & Nvidia’s Lineup

Within a very short amount of time we have seen the Nvidia lineup expand exponentially by offering several renditions of basically the same core. Gone are the G80-based cards like the 8800GTX, 8800 Ultra and 8800GTS and in their place has risen a somewhat confusing lineup of both 8 and 9-series cards in the mid to enthusiast pricing brackets. These “new” cards basically hold respun G80 cores which are now based on a more efficient 65nm manufacturing process. Thus, core speeds are up over the G80 generation while prices have fallen significantly. Speaking of prices, there has been a rash of price reductions of late throughout the Nvidia lineup which means that enthusiast-level performance is well within the grasp many more consumers than it once was. With cards like the 8800GT retailing for under $175, people who normally wouldn’t even consider upgrading their year-old graphics cards are looking at things in a whole new light.

There has also been the addition of the new G200-based cards with the GTX 280 and GTX 260 but these cards are aimed solely at the well-heeled buyer who as over $300 to spend on a graphics card. While both these cards may offer some of the highest performance to date, they have faced some stiff competition from a reinvigorated ATI which has some of their own solutions vying for the customers’ attention. That being said, with the 9800GX2 now riding the End of Life bandwagon the GTX 280 is the undisputed champ of the high performance video card world…but it comes at one heck of a price.

The New OCX Cards

As we have already mentioned, BFG’s OCX cards have always been at the very forefront of pre-overclocked products with their high clock speeds. In this case the 8800GT OCX gets a 100Mhz bump on its core speeds coupled with a 200Mhz DDR increase in memory speeds. The icing on the cake comes with the Stream processors running at a blistering 1728Mhz.

Meanwhile, the 9600GT OCX is pushed quite hard as well with overclocks on the memory and GPU core of 150Mhz and 75Mhz respectively while the Stream processors are upped by 125Mhz. While these overclocks are not at the level of the 8800GT OCX, they are nonetheless quite impressive.

The tradeoff we see here is that both the 9600GT OCX and the 8800GT OCX cost significantly more than their stock-clocked brethren even though their overclocks look to be enough to affect real-world performance.