Factory Overclocked: GeForce 7600 GT
Our different flavors of 7600 GT are not as varied. We were only able to find two different clock speed configurations for this class of card coming as only slightly overclocked. The stock core speed is 560 MHz, but the majority of variants come in at either 580 or 600 MHz. As this isn't a very large difference, we decided to only test one core overclock at the high 600 MHz speed. As far as memory goes, stock clock speed is 700 MHz (giving a 1400 MHz effective data rate). We increased our stock memory speed up to 750 MHz giving us 600/750 clock speeds for our test.
Right off the bat, we see that the overclocked 7600 GT variants don't make nearly the difference as the overclocked 7900 GT cards we have. There is a slight increase in performance, but we aren't able to come anywhere near the performance of the X1900 GT. These 600/750 clocked 7600 GT cards will be in nearly direct price competition with the X1900 GT, so we can clearly not recommend them based on BF2.
With Oblivion, we still don't see a large increase in performance, and with the variance in our testing its clear that spending extra money on an overclocked 7600 GT doesn't net any dramatic gains.
Our X3: reunion numbers stand to bring home the point that has been made with our other two tests -- overclocked 7600 GT cards don't add much value and really aren't worth more money. If you're willing to spend an extra $30 for a 10% overclock, it makes even more sense to add another $30 or so and get the much faster performance offered by the X1900 GT; it doesn't make sense not to take the plunge if it's in the budget.
Clearly the 7600 GT doesn't benefit from the same advantages that the 7900 GT does when it comes to factory overclocked performance. The results in the remaining tests did not provide any new information: the roughly 10% overclock can improve performance by up to 10%, but the gap between the 7600 GT and the faster cards remains quite large.
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Gigahertz19 - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link
I can't stand people who always have to correct every damn thing they read, who cares if the authors of these articles make little mistakes? As long as these articles are readable and understandable who gives a shit. I don't think anybody has the right to complain for something that is free for us to read...now if we were paying to read this material it would be a different story.I can understand correcting big mistakes like correcting the author when he uses the incorrect name for something or is wrong about a fact then that should be corrected but little grammatical errors and sentence structure should be left alone unless it's completely butchered. If you're so interested in these small mistakes go teach high school English.
And yes I know some ass on here will find an error in my above comments and correct it, go for it :).
yacoub - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link
Actually, the authors generally appreciate it and fix it, at least in my experience. It makes for a more professional site to have solid grammar in articles. As for "who gives a s#!t", generally adults do.Netopia - Friday, August 11, 2006 - link
And to support his position, take a look at the sentence now... they fixed it!Joe
JarredWalton - Friday, August 11, 2006 - link
Yup.Derek was working on this late at night and so I went and made my typical corrections after the fact. There were plenty of other minor typos, and we do our best to correct them whether we spot them or someone else does. We certainly don't mind people pointing them out, as long as it's not the "OMFG you misspelled two words on the first page so I stopped reading - you guys are teh lamez0rz!?1!" type of comment. ;)
CKDragon - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link
I have my 7900GT voltmodded & overclocked to 640/820. I know you didn't show voltmod overclocked benchmarks, but seeing that just a core bump up to 580 brings it close to or better than the X1900XT at stock is a nice reference mark to have.Frackal - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link
I doubt that considering a 7900GTX with higher core/memory clocks than that usually gets beaten by an X1900XT at stock. (Not to mention to make that fair they'd have to OC the x1900xt too)This review was relevantly incomplete IMO because it did not show the huge difference between an x1900xt and 7900gt with AA/AF on
yacoub - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link
Nor the huge difference in audible noise levels, for that matter. My 7900GT is practically silent except when in 3D games, and even then it's not a jet engine.yacoub - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link
I recently upgraded from an X800XL to a 7900GT (eVGA N584 model - hsf is copper and covers the RAM chips). I run the 91.33 drivers.I am extremely pleased with this upgrade choice. The card is actually quieter than my Sapphire X800XL Ultra was (it had the Zalman hsf on it stock but the fan was ball-bearing and made a bit of noise).
My rig:
3200+ Venice
1GB DDR RAM dual-channel
A8N-SLI Premium
Games:
CS:Source
Homeworld 2
Haven't reinstalled other games yet but considering the great improvement I noticed in CS:S, I imagine FEAR, NFSMW, and the other games I own but don't currently have installed would also see a large jump in performance. Not only did I gain fps and eliminate the big dips I experienced in busy scenes with the X800XL, I'm also at max graphical settings (everything High) and anywhere from 2xAA and 4xAF up to 4xS AA and 8xAF, and this is at 1680x1050 (20" widescreen).
Very satisfied with the purchase. This cost me less than the X800XL did nine months ago and performs probably 40-60% better, if not more considering the improved graphical settings on top of the fps gain.
vailr - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link
When are the DX 10.0 cards going to available?And, what new assortment of ATI or nVidia GPU's will be on the DX 10.0 cards?
Will there be cheap [<$150] DX 10.0 cards?
Warder45 - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link
I don't see the 7600GT OC 600/750 listed in the charts on the page talking about the 7600GT OC. Lots of 7900GT models though.