High end graphics cards today seem to be a dime a dozen. With ATI and Nvidia tearing each others hair out for the best ranked card, prices as well as performance have only one place to go; unfortunately that’s up, up, up! Lucky for most, ATI hasn’t forgotten the little people who can barely afford to keep up with the technology rat race. High end performance can still be attained at a decent price. Today we’re going to be taking a look at ATI’s latest budget conscious performance card, the Radeon 9600XT. This latest generation of the 9600 line is built around ATI’s RV360 GPU, an improved version of the RV350 that pushes the 9600 Pro cards. The most notable improvements denoted by the “XT” branding are the introduction of a new insulator that has less capacitance than the old silicate glass of the pro line, and the inclusion of GPU core temperature monitoring capabilities. Obviously these are two major steps towards improved overclockability of the card and should prove to be quite interesting in the benchmark phases.