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XFX GeForce 7600 GS Extreme 256MB PCI-E Review |
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Written by Mavke
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Wednesday, 17 May 2006 |
Legit Reviews brings us a review on the XFX GeForce 7600 GS Extreme 256MB PCIe graphics card. The GeForce 7600 GS addresses what is likely the most important part of the market, the budget line. The NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS is a single slot card that features a 400MHz core clock speed with a DDR2 memory clock speed of 400MHz (800MHz effective). The GeForce 7600 GS features 5 vertex shading units with a total of 12 pixel shader pipelines. This is the same number of shading units and pipelines found on the GeForce 7600 GT, so the only difference on the card is the clock speeds and the memory type used. This is big news for those wanting a silent cooling solution and for those in the HTPC market.
 XFX GeForce 7600 GS Extreme 256MB PCI-E Review
If you were thinking this card from XFX was all show and no go then you'd be wrong. XFX has also stepped up the clock rates of this Extreme edition from the standard GeForce 7600 GS. GPU core speeds have been increased from 400MHz to 500MHz while memory speed is up to 900MHz from the 800MHz of the reference design. This is a healthy boost for both and will surely give you just a little more gaming power and still keep the card fan free. XFX has decided that despite the increases in clock speed that the reference passive heatsink will still be fine for their hot rod GeForce 7600 GS.
The reference NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS comes clocked at 400MHz on the core clock at 800MHz on the memory. XFX thought that some users would like to have an overclocked card out of the box and made an Extreme edition. XFX currently sells these two GeForce 7600 GS video cards. Other than the clock speeds the cards are the same. Both the GeForce 7600 GS and GT share the same exact GPU architecture and differ only in their clock speeds. The GeForce 7600 GT runs at 560MHz core and 1400MHz memory clocks, while our Extreme edition runs at 500/900MHz.
Sure our card is overclocked 100MHz on the core and 100MHz on the memory right out of the box, but why not try for more? We downloaded CoolBits and pushed our XFX GeForce 7600 GS Extreme edition even further. We were able to reach a rock solid 535MHz on the core and 1030MHz on the memory. This overclock means that we gained an extra 35MHz on the core and 130MHz on the memory. Now our XFX GeForce 7600 GS Extreme edition just got a little more extreme! The GeForce 7600 GS core is a good overclocker seeing how we started out at 400/800MHz and ended up at 535/1030MHz with a little work.
Well it's clear that NVIDIA and XFX have a great silent performer on their hands with the GeForce 7600 GS series. Even with the reduced memory bandwidth of the GeForce 7600 GS it's easily capable of running with the competing cards from ATI. Add in the fact that the GeForce 7600 GS is completely silent and all of sudden you have a big advantage over the Radeon X1600 XT. During the benchmarking of this card we removed the single GeForce 7800 GT that was in our office gaming system and replaced it with the XFX GeForce 7600 GS Extreme edition video card.
The GeForce 7600 GS represents a huge boost to the mainstream lineup. It performs much better than the older GeForce 6600 GT in all games, runs quieter, and uses less power. At press time this XFX GeForce 7600 GS Extreme could be found for $135 with no rebates. That's about $10 cheaper than the Radeon X1600 XT. The XFX GeForce 7600 GS is a solid gaming card and can play pretty much every game out today with a lot of the higher detail settings enabled. Of course doing so means that you'll need to run at medium resolutions, but this is on a $140 video card remember?
On a GeForce 6600 GT typically you had to turn off some of the newer features to get playable performance but not so with the GeForce 7600 GS. For the price this is a great all around card from gaming to being used in a HTPC. Performance wise the XFX GeForce 7600 GS is a little faster in most situations but again the kicker is silence. The XFX GeForce 7600 GS Extreme is the budget card to own for its silent cooling and stand out performance in its price range.
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