Overclocking, Thermal Performance and Warranty
Overclocking
With a fairly hefty Zalman cooler strapped to the NVIDIA G73 GPU, we decided to see if the Galaxy GeForce 7600 GS 256 GDDR3 had even more to give than its default 500/700 clocks. 7600 GT clocks of 560/700 were dispatched without any issue and the sample eventually stopped at 604/825. Core voltage is identical to the reference voltage NVIDIA recommend for the GT and the 825MHz memory clock is just about bang on for the 1.2ns DRAMs.We had a quick chat with Galaxy to determine whether clocks in that region were reasonable, high because of a hand picked sample or otherwise. They let us know that the sample supplied was as retail samples will be shipped and hadn't been adjusted in any way. Indeed, they commented that our core overclock was likely on the low side. Matching 7600 GT clocks should be simple for all Galaxy GeForce 7600 GS 256 GDDR3s, given the Zalman cooler.
Thermal Performance
At the aforementioned 7600 GT-matching clocks of 560/700, we found the Galaxy reported a core temperature lower than that of the 7600 GT's reference cooler (atop a BFG retail sample) by some 10°C, under full load. A combination of a better cooler and what we reckon is higher heatsink-on-GPU pressure, it's to be expected.The Galaxy GS 256 GDDR3 really is just a GT being sold at GS-level prices, with better cooling to boot. And that leads us on nicely to the conclusion.
