PNY GeForce 9600GT 512 MB DDR3 PCI-Express Graphics Card VCG96512GXPB

My wife was complaining that The Sims 2 with all expansions under Vista would get slow and laggy anytime it snowed or rained in the game. In fact, it would get almost unplayable to where she turned snow and rain off completely. TS2 is harder on the CPU than video card, and the one I had was very fast to begin with (by 2007 standards), it was the BFG GeForce 7900 GS OC 256MB PCI Express. Anyhow, I was doubtful a new video card would really help, but I couldn't resist the after-rebate price on this card so I went ahead and bought it. It's a night and day difference, zero lag and super fast with all settings maxed, anti-aliasing/smoothing maxed, and resolution set to my monitor's native 1680x1050. The card itself is quiet and the fan is variable speed temperature controlled. It is a long card and a tight fit, with the power connector plugged in, it extends into the hard drive bay, so it's a good thing I didn't have a drive in that particular bay. I use DVI and the text and graphics are crisp as can be. It only has a 3-year warranty, but I think that should be more than long enough for anyone who likes to stay semi-current.

[...] It was my first time building a PC so I didn't want to invest too much since I didn't know how things would turn out. I paired it with a e7200, 2 gigs of ram, running on vista 32 bit. The performance is good enough to be well above average for anything made a few years ago. However, once something demanding is ran it starts to chug along a little more that I would like. It could be a bottleneck in my system (either the processor or the RAM), but I have have since OC'd the processor and still get the chugging affect. However these complaints have to be weight against the great price. All in all I'm satisfied. I plan on using this in a secondary PC once I start building a true power PC in the near future. I would recommend this card to anyone who plans on playing slightly older games, and doesn't feel the need to max out all the setting on new games. Also most games are going to run very well at 1900x1200 so keep that in mind if you are buying a new monitor. So don't waste your money on getting a higher resolution monitor than 1680x1250. Of course it could have to do with bottlenecks in my system.

Two things to consider on power supplies and graphics cards: The total wattage (W) and the amps (A) available at 12 Volts (V). Higher end graphics cards can't get enough power through the motherboard and require a direct connection to the power supply. The 12V is normally split between several rails/plugs. First rail supplies the computer, 2nd supplies the 1st video card, 3rd rail supplies the 2nd video card, etc.Even though my system (500W & 34A) exceeds the minmum requirements (400W & 26A) this card puts my system into a continuous reboot, restarting every few seconds never mind starting windows.Contacted PNY and they said buy a new power supply that can supply 26A on a single 12V rail. Turns ou there is no such thing. Even the most advanced power supplies only supply 18A per rail (like my current system).Of course ANTOnline happily accepts return except on computer parts so now I'm stuck with a $160 card I can't use.Lastly unless the game is on the driver disk I didn't get the copy of Frontlines that is supposed to come with this package.

I purchased this to replace an ATI x1950 pro in my Vista box. Game performance is great but, for some unknown reason, text quality in desktop applications (IE, Word, Excel, etc.) is terrible (that's with a DVI connection to a 24" LCD using native resolution). I'm hoping this is a driver issue or defective card and will update this review if anything changes.

Right now is a really great time to upgrade your video card if you haven't already. the Nvidia 9600GT series of cards is a worthwhile upgrade for just about any card more than a year or so old. If you've got any 6000 series or 7000 series Nvidia card, this is an upgrade. If you've got an 8000 series less than an 8800 this is an upgrade.This card is just a little slower than an 8800GT (with at least 512MB, not the crippled 256MB versions), and priced appropriately. It is on par with ATI's 3800 series cards, and a slower than the ATI's new 4800 series cards that just came out. All of these cards I just mentioned will play ANY recent video games with all of your eye-candy set to High at very playable framerates, and many games (especially older ones) you can set to Very High settings.At the time of this writing, you can find all of these cards for less than two hundred bucks, with this 9600GT and ATI's 3800 series at the low end of the price spectrum for as low as one hundred after rebates and such if you shop around a bit. Really, this is a great time to buy a video card if you are at all in the market for one (or might be in the near future).For the people looking for numbers, on my system Vista gives it a 5.9 for both Graphics and Gaming Graphics. 3DMark06 gives it a score of 11200 at stock speed, and slightly overclocked it went up to 12400. Overclocking takes just a few moments with Rivatuner software if you so choose, but even at stock speeds this is plenty fast.The only things to watch out for is the size of the card (it is fairly long), and make sure you have an adequate power supply. You don't need a HUGE power supply, but you just need a good one and not a generic cheapo one. It requires a separate PCIE power input. This isn't anything out of the ordinary, and any other card in this range you get will need the same thing. The fan is quite loud at startup, but goes down to near silent once the drivers load up.My system is a Q6600 (overclocked to 3.2Ghz), 8GB RAM, 3x Western Digital 640GB hard drives, OCZ StealthStream 600W power supply, Asus P5B Deluxe motherboard.