GeForce 7600 GT - Reference Board Exam
GeForce 7600 GT, sadly, uses the same crappy cooler as 7900 GT.
7600 GT is even smaller than 7900 GT, but only in terms of width, both the PCBs for those products sharing a common height measurement. Power circuitry is even simpler since the board doesn't need any external power, the board happy to grab whatever it needs for operation over the PCI Express slot.
G73 in 7600 GT form (560MHz main clock) means around 65W of heat to deal with under maximum load conditions. The card sports four 512Mib DRAMs for 256MiB in total. They're Samsung K4J53234QC parts, rated at 1.4ns (just over 700MHz) at 1.8V, and connect to the GPU's 128-bit memory bus in pairs, filling the two memory channels.
Just one DVI port is dual-link capable, but it's nice to see NVIDIA supplying two of those digital ports on a mid-range board. All too often the second display connector is analogue, which is madness in 2006 when most flat-panel displays sold carry DVI, and where flat-panel displays are by far the most common and prices make buying 2 a realistic reality for many.
As a dual-head user myself, I appreciate it.
As mentioned, the cooler is the same one as used on the 7900 GT. So it's mostly pants, then, and needs to be avoided. Unlike with 7900 GT, it's not clear how many AIBs will likely use it, but it's to be avoided ultimately. The SKU is ripe for passive cooling, though, so look out for that from a vendor or two.
I'd almost have liked to have seen the 7600 GT use the 7900 GT's PCB, giving the end user more 3rd party cooling options and better scope for overclocking due to electricals and power supply, but it wasn't to be.
So we're impressed by the physical and environmental attributes of the 560MHz 7600 GT, bar the cooler. It's worth noting that 7600 GT will also come in 128MiB flavours for a bit less money, but we urge you to spend the extra funds on the 256MiB board, to keep performance up. With modern games, 128MiB simply isn't enough, even at the lesser resolutions the 7600 GT will largely be used at for desktop and gaming, compared to the faster products in NVIDIA's stable.
Just about ready for a look at performance? Thought so; click to the next page to see the system spec used for testing, or jump a page after that to go right to the first benchmarks.
