Geforce 7600GS 256MB 400 Mhz

List Price: $177.45

Features:

• Box Content - XFX GeForce 7600 256MB PCI Express Video Card, Quick Install Guide, Drivers CD, S-Video Cable, DVI to VGA Adapter
• nVidia GeForce 7600 GS GPU/VPU
• 12 Pixel Pipelines
• 2048 x 1536 at 85Hz Maximum Resolution
• 256MB Video Memory

Customer Reviews:

Great card for the money [Posted on 2006-10-30]
This is a very nice graphics card. I don't play a lot of games but it seems to hold its own just fine. If you are into extreme gaming you might find the GT version to be a bit more to your liking. If you are just looking for a very nice graphics card for general to mid-level game playing I think you will be very happy. It is passively cooled so it is quite. It can get a bit hot if you are playing games but the highest I got it was 71c. That may sound hot but it's a graphics card not a CPU. The default "slowdown" temp is 125c. I have a small case without great ventilation. If you have better ventilation you will probably have even lower temps. The dual DVI is great. I can also confirm this card works without any flaws in Linux (I use Ubuntu). I have XGL and beryl working just fine.

An Excellent Card [Posted on 2007-04-24]
I've been using this card for over a month now without any issues other than Nvidia drivers for Windows Vista still need work. This becomes apparent when playing some games, but has no effect with general uses such as web surfing, using office applications, viewing movies or photos, etc. I had no issues at all when using this card with Windows XP (SP2).

The card is very quiet because it doesn't have a fan. I've read elsewhere that some people have been experiencing issues related to overheating. This is not the fault of the card; it is an issue with case ventilation. If your computer case lacks sufficient ventilation you should consider a card with an integrated cooling fan. I have never had this card get more than warm to the touch. As an experiment, I directed an 80mm case fan (that I had lying around) to blow across the heatsink and was surprised to find that the card was actually cool to the touch (and much quieter than it would be with a video card cooling fan installed). This is something you may want to consider if you don't have sufficient case ventilation.

One caveat, however: this card isn't for hardcore gamers. If you're one of those then you will probably want to go with a minimum of a Nvidia 7950 or a similar offering from ATI. I state this even though this card is SLI capable. In my opinion you will get much greater gaming performance using a more powerful video card in a single configuration than using two of these in a SLI configuration.

While not for hardcore gamers, this card is an excellent "general-purpose" card that can still handle most games currently on the market (albeit with reduced performance). If you want a video card that is quiet--and provides excellent performance--you should definitely consider this card.

Accomplished what I bought it for. [Posted on 2007-05-06]
My new HP Pavilion Vista system came with only a single VGA port, and I bought the card to give me dual monitor capabilities (one of the highly touted advantages of Vista). I opted for the Geforce brand because supposedly, this product line was ready for Vista whereas the ATI cards may not have been. The card allowed me to upgrade over the integrated graphics, increasing my "Windows Experience Index" from 3.0 to 4.3. I'm not a gamer, so I was going for a low cost solution. I also thought the non-fan heatsink design was kinda cool (some of the 7600GS's do come with fans instead of heatsinks).

If I had to do it over again, I'd probably opt for a Geforce 7600GT model, which is supposedly a big upgrade for a minor increase in price. I didn't go for one originally because my system came with DDR2 memory, same as the Geforce 7600GS, whereas the Geforce 7600GT's comes with DDR3 memory, and I was concerned that the mismatch might cause problems.

I love this card! [Posted on 2007-05-29]
Over the past few months I have purchased 3 of these cards. I use two in an SLI setup for a gaming machine and one by itself in a home theater PC. All run smoothly. At first when I only had one, it ran fine for games like Oblivion. Two in SLI mode can handle just about anything out there these days. The one in by HTPC works great with my high definition television. It has no problem outputting at 1920x1080 resolution.

Of course, the best thing about these cards, and the reason I bought 3 of them, is that they are absolutely SILENT because they are passively cooled.

**One thing people building HTPCs should know is that these cards are not capable of outputting 1080p; 1080i is the max. Although my TV can handle 1080p, I felt this limitation was far outweighed by the the fact that the card is silent.

Gets too hot to be considered for gaming [Posted on 2008-03-19]
I own two of these which I'm currently using in a SLI configuration (msi nvidia 750i SLI, q6600 2.4GHz, 4GB DDR2) and I can play doom3 with everything maxed out (even AA) and works incredibly smooth for a couple of minutes then the cards turn very hot and are unable to keep a constant framerate. I blame that on the lack of active cooling.

I know, these cards offer great value for their price but don't expect any miracles and don't buy them for gaming. If you do at least pick the version with active cooling. Honestly, I bought them to build a quiet PC and made the wrong assumption that buying two for SLI would help me play some games at a decent frame-rate...

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