| Power Color ATI Radeon 9600SE Review |
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| The Power Color Radeon 9600SE is a great graphics card for any modder. It is both fast and small. Perfect for low profile portable gaming machines. This review will compare the pros and cons of the Radeon 9600SE as compared to Power Color's previous Radeon 9200LE low profile graphics card. |
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| The actual card is great looking with a red PCB and black
heatsink.
The great feature of this card is the low-profile design, allowing the user to install it in small systems. |
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The box contains:
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| One thing not included is a DVI to VGA adapter.
This would be required if you needed to use the graphics card in a low profile mode with a normal analog monitor. |
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| The actual card doesn't look much different then the Radeon 9200 Series, but in reality quite a few changes have been made |
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Radeon 9600SE |
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Radeon 9200SE |
| One noticeable difference is the actual graphics processor.
The Radeon 9600 makes direct contact between the die and the heatsink. The heatsink is held on by two spring loaded pins. While the Radeon 9200 is encased in a package, and the heatsink is directly attached to the chip with thermal glue. |
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| I noticed several concerns with the heatsink once removed.
First that there was no thermal interface material used at all on this heatsink. Also since the heatsink was attached with only two push pins, the actual heatsink can rock back and forth and chip the edges of the die. (Highlighted above) This can be avoided by handling the graphics card carefully, or by applying a thermal phase change pad to the die. The card did how ever run very stable and cool both with thermal interface material and without. |
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| I choose to both install a thermal pad, and a 40mm chipset fan. |
| Summary |
| Even with a few easy to fix concerns I would still
recommend the Power Color Radeon 9600SE for use on modified computers.
Without a change in size Power Color has managed to upgrade their low profile card line to include DirectX 9.0, and AGP 8X speed. |
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| I now use this card inside my award winning Radioactive PC and play
games on it daily. The performance is great, and the card is stable.
It make the perfect high performance graphics card when you are tight on space. |
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retailers:
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