A 1/4 inch seems a little long, but are just speculating or did you measure them? As card will have a slight variance in pin sizes. On that, you were having audio issues?? so you have a 9600 that also does audio, correct? If that is the case, i think those two shorter pins are shorter for that reason, they deal with audio, i ran across a thread that was talking about audio and the 9600GT.