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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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Quake 4 To get a better idea how a beefier looking version of the Doom 3 engine would handle, I did a manual run through of the beginning of Quake 4 using FRAPS. High quality settings were enabled with 2X AA and 8X AF. Remember, the game is locked at 60 fps maximum.
Just for comparison, the 6600 DDR-2 with no AA and 8X AF running this same scene clocked in at 43.95 fps at 1024 x 768. This is compared to the 42.12 fps at 2X AA that the 7600 GS put in. Again, that is a pretty good leap in performance from what used to be the premier $100 video card. Guild Wars This is another popular MMORPG that features a DirectX 9 based engine. The graphics are quite good in this app, and it features a surprisingly small performance overhead to achieve these looks. All settings were set to High Quality with 4X AA and 8X AF enabled. A manual run through of Post-Searing Ascalon was done with FRAPS.
Here we can really see the disparity between the memory bandwidth of the two cards. At 2048 x 1536 we see a huge performance difference between the two. The extra shading power and bandwidth of the 7600 GT makes it very playable even at 2048 x 1536 with 4X AA enabled. Still, a solid performance at 1600 x 1200 with 4X AA is nothing to complain about from the 7600 GS. Again, this is a pretty big upgrade from the 6600 DDR-2 which once sat at this very same price point just months ago.
Something that I found interesting was that the 110 nm NV43 chip was larger than the more complex G72. Otherwise, the board layout and components for each product are quite similar. Not to mention the 400 MHz GDDR-2. Overclocking From the outset is should be said that the passive 7600 GS is not designed for overclocking. While the passive cooler might be able to handle the stock speeds well, pushing the chip to higher speeds will only create more heat that a passive cooler cannot adequately dissipate without air movement over its fins. If a user strapped an 80 mm fan directly to the cooler, then they could probably get some good speed out of it, but that defeats the purpose of having a passive cooler in the first place. I was able to overclock the card to a core speed of 449 MHz and the memory to 500 MHz (1000 MHz effective). As you will see, this did produce some nice performance increases in the following benchmarks.
The combination of a higher core speed, and especially the extra bandwidth afforded by the memory at 500 MHz, gives it a pretty good edge in 3D Mark 2005. Remember, the 6600 GT at stock speeds scored around 3789 with memory clocked at 500 MHz as well.
Again we can see what the extra clocks do for performance with the 7600 GS.
And don’t forget the minimum FPS.
Seeing upwards of a 30% jump in performance, the extra clocks do come in handy for the budget enthusiast.
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Copyright 1999-2006 PenStar Systems, LLC. |
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