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Galaxy GeForce 7600 GS 256MB PCI-E Review |
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Written by Zombie
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Sunday, 14 May 2006 |
Hexus published a review on Galaxy GeForce 7600 GS 256MB PCIe graphics card. It seems you can't make it through a day as a graphics analyst without tripping over the reference rulebook an NVIDIA AIB partner has just tossed aside in the pursuit of a more appealing product for their customer. The factory overclock is the most common avenue, many of NVIDIA's board partners going down that route to sell more boards, but rarely do they do anything else. Not that free speed is such a bad thing, but any enthusiast worth his or her salt could do the simple clock changing work that most vendors do, on their own, saving themselves the price premium attached.
 Galaxy GeForce 7600 GS 256MB PCI-E Review
Galaxy certainly hope so with a GeForce 7600 GS to shake up the establishment. Not only have they laughed in the face of GeForce 7600 GS's reference clock settings, but they've thrown out the obnoxious little reference cooler and attached something entirely more attractive in its place. And all while offering you other goodies to aid even more performance to be investigated without fear of breaking or voiding anything. I commented at CeBIT this year that Galaxy were a vendor that impressed because of their willingness to have a go at something other than the reference design.
We said in the intro that NVIDIA's AIB partners like to throw out the reference rulebook, but rarely do they throw it so hard that the pages describing the PCB get torn out. Galaxy not only use a non-NVIDIA cooler, but they also use their own PCB design. If you know the GeForce 7600 GS's reference specs you'll know that NVIDIA specify DDR2 memories at 400MHz. That simply won't do for this SKU, equipped with 1.2ns GDDR3 memory instead. Clocks are set out of the box at 500/1400MHz, well over the 400/800MHz reference clocks, and that means even with a significantly inflated memory clock.
My only complaint besides that is that the cooler makes it slightly too large for my HTPC box, otherwise I'd be misplacing the sample in there for as long as possible. The G73 is a fine video citizen and while you get passive GeForce 7600 GS boards for more suitable HTPC-only work, and Galaxy is aiming this overclocked GS at the gamer, in a dual-purpose media/gaming box you'd find it hard to pick up something better. Great price/performance, dual-DVI, good overclocking, dual BIOS for the adventurous, quiet running, low price and frugal power consumption are the highlights.
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