The Vvikoo 9600GT

The 9600GT looks quite similar to the 8800GT Vvikoo came out with a month or two ago as it features the same Zalman Z-Machine GV1000 cooler; this version though, is in copper. This thing is pretty big, with the large copper fins stretching across almost the whole card.

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The fan in it's centre is the standard Zalman Z Machine one,it's 80mm and has translucent frosted blades. However this one has a Vvikoo branded sticker in it's centre.

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The entire cooler is copper based, and that means lots of copper fins. They're ridged along the top, and wrap right around the heatpipes to maximize contact with them.

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There's 4 heatpipes in total, and as with the fins, they're made of copper. Heatpipes are designed to move heat from an area of high temperature to an area of low temperature, in this case from the core of the cooler, to the large surface area fins above. To read more about heatpipes, check out the glossary entry here.

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Looking under the heatpipes, you might be interested to see that the RAM chips have no heatsinks attached. This will seem strange to some as adding RAM sinks has become quite the norm for some GPU companies; especially those that fit large aftermarket GPU coolers. Having spoken to a Vvikoo representative, I was told that they were confident that the airflow from the heatsink mounted fan would cool the chips sufficiently. We will soon find out.

One thing that is good about the RAM chips though, is that instead of being manufactured by Qimonda they were made by Samsung. The latter of the two is considered the best at producing overclocking GDDR chips so this should mean good things to come.

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Another part of the card that is a little bit naked is the PWM area. Again, a heatsink on this area isn't always deemed necessary, but it can't hurt.

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The full cooler setup is actually hooked onto the back of the card to keep it stable.

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Never fear though, it's also attached in the old school fashion, screws. Fortunately, they are all relatively low profile which should mean there are no mounting issues at the rear of the card.

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From the back of the card you can also see that the 9600 has a single SLI bridge connector. This means that it's capable with linking up with another 9600 for added performance. However, because there is only one bridge connector, it means TRI SLI isn't supported.

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At the rear of the card you have dual DVI ports - oddly, mounted vertically - a display port, HDMI port and SPDIF in.

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