X-bit labs

GeCube RADEON 9600 XT “Extreme” Graphics Card Review (page 2)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin

[ 02/15/2004 | 05:00 PM ]

GeCube RADEON 9600 XT “Extreme”: Box and Accessories

The retail package of the graphics card is decorated in the GeCube style: a red band to the right carries the company’s name, while the rest of the box front cover depicts a composition like “yet another visitor from hell”. A few slogans and stickers are scattered around:

The “Extreme” sticker is the most important as it tells you that the card is working at increased frequencies. The back side of the box contains some info about the features of the card like supported resolutions. When we open the box we find the following things:

• GeCube RADEON 9600 XT graphics card;
• D-Sub-to-DVI-I adapter;
• Universal RCA/S-Video cable;
• User’s manual;
• CD with drivers;
• CD with CyberLink PowerDVD XP 4.0;
• CD with Delta Force: Black Hawk Down.

Yes, the accessories are not so numerous, but it is quite enough for many users. It’s not the first time we see a universal RCA/S-Video cable included with a graphics card: Gigabyte RADEON 9600 PRO comes with a cable like that, too. The basic drawback of this cable is that one of the connectors will be hanging idle, adding more confusion to the heap of cables at the back of your system case.

Note that ATI Technologies has started taking additional payment from the manufacturers who want to enclose a coupon for a free copy of Half-Life 2 with their products. This is a rule for graphics cards on all ATI VPUs, save for the RADEON 9800 XT. As a result, RADEON 9600 XT-based cards are very likely to lose this free accessory pretty soon, too.