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Albatron GeForce 7600 GT 256MB PCI-E Review |
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Written by Mavke
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Friday, 23 June 2006 |
Sharky Extreme brings us a review on the Albatron GeForce 7600 GT 256MB PCIe graphics card. Mainstream graphics cards may not get the same press as their enthusiast level counterparts, but it is the area where you can buy a performance video card that won't break the bank. The price performance ratio is what drives mainstream graphics, and strikes that perfect balance between hitting the high framerates and maxing out your credit card. Graphics vendors usually do this by offering a mainstream card that is similar to the high-end models, but has been cut down in a few areas. This translates into a comparable feature set and lower performance, which is more than offset by a sub-$200 price tag.
 Albatron GeForce 7600 GT 256MB PCI-E Review
The Albatron GeForce 7600 GT card features the GeForce 7600 GT graphics processing unit, which is the current top dog in the mainstream market. It is a 90nm core with 12 pixel pipelines, 12 pixel shader processors, 12 texture units, and 5 vertex pipelines. This is a very balanced GPU architecture, which doesn't elevate one feature at the expense of another. Where things drop back a bit is in the memory interface, which is 128-bit rather than the 256-bit link that most high-end card employ. The onboard memory is GDDR3, and at an effective 1.4GHz clock speed, memory bandwidth is still a very impressive.
The Albatron GeForce 7600 GT 256MB PCI Express card sticks to the default 560MHz core and 1.4GHz GDDR3 memory clock speeds, and the overall design remains true to the NVIDIA reference cards. The card is single slot design and features a surprisingly diminutive heatsink fan for the clock speed. This is one of the benefits of the die shrink to 90nm, as is the lack of an external power connector. Like all GeForce 7 series cards, the Albatron GeForce 7600 GT supports the latest Shader Model 3.0, as well as a host of NVIDIA features and options. Currently the GeForce 7600 line is PCI Express only.
The benchmark results of the Albatron GeForce 7600 GT exceeded expectations, and although we anticipated its supremacy at the mainstream level, the card's ability to outperform the GeForce 6800 Ultra with regularity, and even take occasional wins over the Radeon X1800 XL and GeForce 7800 GT, was a very nice surprise. The addition of higher detail anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering settings does pull the GeForce 7600 GT back from the high-end cards, but it remains well ahead of the other mainstream offerings. The ability of the GeForce 7600 GT to handle old and new games easily is an incredible feature.
It's tough to find any real fault with the Albatron GeForce 7600 GT card, especially when taking into account its target market. Its performance far outstrips that of other mainstream cards like the GeForce 6600 GT or Radeon X1600 XT, while matching up with a GeForce 6800 Ultra in terms of average game framerates. In a few benchmarks, the GeForce 7600 GT even manages to sneak up on higher-end cards like the Radeon X1800 XL and GeForce 7800 GT, and does so with an affordable price tag. The GeForce 7600 GT is the best mainstream GPU design we've ever seen.
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