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NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT 256MB PCI-E Review |
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Written by Mavke
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Sunday, 07 May 2006 |
Adrian's RojakPot shares a review on the NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT 256MB PCIe graphics card. Recently, we covered the launch of the new GeForce 7600 GT GPU, NVIDIA's new mid-range graphics card. It officially replaces the very popular GeForce 6600 GT, but will it be able to mimic the GeForce 6600 GT's popularity by offering the same great combination of low cost and great performance? The new GeForce 7600 GT already has a large advantage over its predecessor in both fillrate and memory bandwidth. But that's not all. It also has two additional vertex pipelines. Coupled with a higher clock speed for the vertex processor, the new GeForce 7600 GT can process quite a lot more vertices than the GeForce 6600 GT.
 NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT 256MB PCI-E Review
Unlike its big brother, the NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT takes up only one slot, thanks to its slim copper cooler. Following the tradition of previous mid-range cards, the cooler is a compact affair. It covers less than half the surface area of the card. In fact, it doesn't even cool the memory chips. The GeForce 7600 GT looks identical to, albeit shorter than, the GeForce 7900 GT. Both cards use the same single slot copper cooler. Therefore, they are both much shorter and thinner than the GeForce 7900 GTX which uses a really bulky aluminium cooler which also features those lovely heatpipe technology.
The GeForce 7600 GT comes with 256MB of GDDR3 memory. This reference model used four Samsung 1.4ns memory chips. The 1.4ns speed grade is the third-fastest speed grade for this memory chip, specifying a maximum frequency of 1400MHz. Although that's exactly what the GeForce 7600 GT memory clock runs at, the fact that this model has been speed graded up to 1800MHz does give it some overclocking possibilities. The four memory chips are all placed on the front of the card, around the GPU. However, they are not attached to the GPU cooler although two chips are in the pathway of the exhaust.
The GeForce 7600 GT did not produce quite as much heat as the the GeForce 7900 GT, which shares the same cooler. Still, it wasn't particularly overclockable, even though we added an extra fan to the system to reduce the effect of the high ambient temperature, as well as ensure a level playing field. We needed the extra fan to prevent the GeForce 7900 GTX from undergoing any thermal throttling. In the end, we were able to overclock the GeForce 7600 GT to a maximum stable core clock speed of 601MHz and a memory clock speed of 1582MHz. But remember that the overclockability of every card is different.
Even though the new NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT is a mid-range card designed to replace GeForce 6600 GT, its performance was far better than expected. It actually came close to the performance of the GeForce 7800 GT, a high-end card which costs twice as much. Just like its high-end GeForce 7900 brothers, the GeForce 7600 GT was fabricated using the 90nm die process. The finer manufacturing process allows to run at a higher clock speed and yet use less power and emit less heat. Of course, NVIDIA distanced the GeForce 7600 GT from its expensive brothers by giving it only half as many pixel pipelines.
But thanks to a higher core and memory bus speed, the GeForce 7600 GT performed well enough to be an enticing option for those on a more restrictive budget. The lower power requirement also has a nice side benefit, it doesn't need or come with a PCI Express power connector. This means you can most probably use your old PSU's, even if you want to run two cards in SLI. However, we feel it would be quite pointless to run two GeForce 7600 GT's in SLI. The GeForce 7600 GT's greatest strength is its great value. It offers great performance for an affordable price. Buying two of these will cancel out that advantage.
Instead of buying two GeForce 7600 GT cards, you can actually buy a GeForce 7900 GT card with cash to spare. The GeForce 7900 GT easily beats the GeForce 7600 GT SLI, making the SLI setup both costly and redundant. There is no doubt that the new NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT is a very good mid-range card. It offers great performance at an affordable price. For those who cannot afford its more expensive brethrens, the GeForce 7600 GT is certainly a very attractive choice.
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