![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Monday , May 15, 2006
- Author:
- Brent Justice
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
BFGTech GeForce 7600 GT OC
We wanted to find out how ATI’s and NVIDIA’s latest mainstream GPUs facilitate high quality gameplay, so we put them to the test in standard and widescreen gaming. A BFGTech GeForce 7600 GT OC vs. ATI Radeon X1800 GTO, you don’t want to miss this!
Introduction:
It many times comes down to money. When you are out there trying to figure out what video card best suits your needs, doesn’t it usually come down to which one is within your budget? Some people have high budgets allowing them to spend $500+ on a video card. Most however are not in a position to spend so much on a video card but still want something that allows a good gaming experience. This is where the mainstream market for video cards comes from. At the mainstream level, video cards actually occupy a range, from $129 USD up to $249 USD.
In the mainstream arena is where the real battles are fought and won. This is the range that more people are going to be able to afford and thus purchase a video card at. More will be sold. Both ATI and NVIDIA offer different levels of GPUs based on their latest technologies in this segment varying in performance and price. In fact both ATI and NVIDIA have recently released new GPUs into this segment. We haven’t evaluated either of them yet so today is our first look at both these new GPUs.
NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT GPU Overview:
Back on March 9th NVIDIA launched a slew of new GPUs based on GeForce 7 series technology. We evaluated the new GeForce 7900 GT and GeForce 7900 GTX. What we didn’t evaluate that was also announced was the GeForce 7600 GT (G73). You can read all about the GeForce 7600 GT’s architecture here.
The GeForce 7600 GT is literally half of a GeForce 7900 GTX. What we mean by this is that the vertex shader units, pixel shader units, total ALUs, and raster operators have all been halved from the 7900 GTX. The first chart on this page sums it all up. There are 5 vertex shader units, 12 pixel shader units, 24 total ALUs and 8 raster operators on the GeForce 7600 GT. Everything else about the GeForce 7600 GT matches the 7900 GTX in features and support. Shader Model 3.0 is fully supported, floating point 16 HDR is fully supported, and transparency antialiasing is fully supported. The GeForce 7600 GT is manufactured at 90 nanometers and has a total of 178 million transistors. NVIDIA has reported the power draw of the GPU to be 65 watts. This means is the GPU is a very power and temperature friendly GPU.
The GeForce 7600 GT is in full production and available on the shelves now. What is really exciting about this GPU is the price point NVIDIA has suggested. Depending on framebuffer size and clock speeds you should be able to find a video card based on this GPU between $179-$229 USD.
BFGTech GeForce 7600 GT OC:
We have a brand new retail BFGTech GeForce 7600 GT OC to evaluate today.
BFGTech takes the GeForce 7600 GT GPU to new heights by offering a higher than stock core and memory frequency. NVIDIA’s recommended clock speeds are 560 MHz GPU and 1.4 GHz memory. BFGTech has this card fully warrantied and factory overclocked at 580 MHz GPU and 1.45 GHz memory.
You will also find a full 256MB of GDDR3 memory on a 128-bit bus on board. This video card even has 1 dual-link DVI port and 1 single-link DVI port with HDTV capability. The dual-link DVI connector will come in handy for people operating on large 30”+ screens. With the default clock speeds of the BFGTech GeForce 7600 GT OC the available pixel fillrate is 6.9 MTexels/Sec and the memory bandwidth is 23.2 GB/sec.
BFGTech provides you a glimpse at the video card you are viewing with their boxes. This way you know exactly what you are buying with this see through window on their box. Major specifications are listed on the front of the box with indication that it is SLI ready and includes software. The back of the box goes into more detail about the features of this video card. There is also a little window on the back of the box so you can verify that this is the correct video card before you walk out of the store with it.
The BFGTech GeForce 7600 GT OC is a very short and light video card that fits into a PCI-Express slot. Active cooling comes standard with a copper heatsink and neon green fan. The low power requirement of this video card means no external power connector is needed. The BFGTech GeForce 7600 GT OC is SLI ready.
There are two DVI ports but only one is capable of dual-link DVI, the other is single-link DVI. Onboard RAM is Samsung GDDR3 modules rated at 1.429ns at 700 MHz. Since the default clock speed of the BFGTech GeForce 7600 GT OC’s memory is at 725 MHz (1.45 GHz) it is slightly over the rated speed of the memory. This being so we don’t expect much potential in overclocking the memory further, we will have to see. BFGTech includes a driver CD, a gamer’s toolkit CD which includes GameDrive 9.0. There are two DVI to VGA adapters and a multi-video out cable providing HDTV, S-Video and composite outputs.