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eVGA GeForce 7600 GS |
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Two Birds, one Thrown Video Card |
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by Josh Walrath |
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The 7600 GS eVGA was kind enough to send me a sample of this product, and I must admit that I am quite pleased by what I see. When I reviewed the 6600 DDR-2 all those months ago, I came away quite happy to see that NVIDIA and its partners were working hard to provide the $100 market with a very solid performing, yet feature packed product. The 7600 GS continues this tradition. While clocked at the same 400 MHz as the 6600, it does have double the ROPS (4 vs. 8), more pixel shaders (8 vs. 12), and more vertex shaders (3 vs. 5). Not only that, but the G7x pixel shaders can put out quite a bit more work per clock than the older NV4x shaders could. So even running at identical speeds, the 7600 GS should have a performance advantage in most situations. The only thing really holding this card back would be the memory clock speed, which is identical to what the 6600 DDR-2 featured. This means that in memory bandwidth limited situations, the 7600 GS should perform only slightly faster due to architectural differences as compared to the 6600 DDR-2.
Nothing terribly exciting to see here. Just the passive cooler, some capacitors, VGA/DVI/S-Video outputs... oh, and don't forget that all the latest 7600 and above cards come with the SLI golden fingers. With the rise of quiet computing as well as Home Theater PC’s, the need for a silent card is growing. eVGA has decided to bring out this product to address this market. The silent cooler is not the entire story though. The killer application for HTPC is to view video and DVD in HDTV resolutions, and to achieve cleaner video output from multiple sources. NVIDIA’s PureVideo is an excellent feature to support such applications. While currently PureVideo is lagging ATI’s Avivo in terms of some features (like uncommon cadences, noise reduction, etc.), it is still a pretty remarkable platform for video playback. Something else to consider is that the pure floating point performance of these graphics processors potentially allows a lot of features to be added, and NVIDIA has promised to do so. Currently NVIDIA is one of the few to offer things like inverse telecine, temporal de-interlacing, and other features at HD resolutions.
From here we can see how tall the heatsink fins are. This will easily fit in a single slot on pretty much any motherboard. Again, no external power plug is needed for this card. Even without an active cooler the card never really gets hot as long as there is some airflow over it. In my testing I used a standard desktop case with one quiet 80 mm fan blowing directly onto the card. At idle the chip registered around 50 degrees C, while at full load it only got up to around 67 degrees C. This isn’t exactly cool running, but it certainly is well within tolerances for the chip and other comparable cards.
The back of the card is uneventful as well. What I really like is that the passive heatsink is well secured to the card. Older heatsinks often used two plastic push-pins to secure the cooling. Having four metal screws holding it all in place is a definite plus. eVGA doesn’t pack much of a bundle with the card, but considering its price point there isn’t a whole lot that can be added. It does feature the quick install guide, installation CD, VGA to DVI converter, S-Video cable, and component cable. The card does not need an external power connection, just as the 7600 GT did not need one. The card was well protected in its sturdy little box, so shipping damage concerns should be minimized. For a more in depth look at the technology behind the 7600 series of cards, please take a look at my 7600 GT review.
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Copyright 1999-2006 PenStar Systems, LLC. |
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