In NVIDIA’s long series of moving GeForce 8 series GPUs to new PCBs and rebranding them GeForce 9, GeForce 9600GSO was probably the cards that received the most critique. It’s more or less identical to GeForce 8800GS, but it seems that there are some 9600GSO cards out there that hides a terrible secret. Some cards are in fact GeForce 8800GTS 512MB crippled by a new BIOS. And we assume you all know what that means … it’s soft-modding time!
Back in the Radeon 9800/9500 and GeForce 6800 era there were more than a couple of different softmods available to unlock quite a lot of performance. In some cases all you needed was a special driver and you were set. It seems that at least one manufacturer took a shortcut when it launched one of its GeForce 9600GSO, namely Galaxy.
Galaxy 9600GSO OverClocked Edition is namely a rebadged GeForce 8800GTS 512MB. If you look at the card you will notice that it has eight memory chips instead of the usual six. The last two channels have been deactivated in the BIOS but can easily be unlocked by downloading a modded BIOS. You should NOT try this if you’re not 100% certain that you have the right card, otherwise all you will get is a very expensive hand-held fan.
