Home >> Computer Add-Ons >> Graphics Cards
Home >> Computer Add-Ons
Geforce 7600GT Ko 256MB | List Price: $119.99
|
Brand: EVGA
Binding: Electronics
Features: - EVGA e-GeForce 7600 GT KO w/EVGA fan
- GF 7600 GT
- 256 MB GDDR3
Best bang for your "no PCI-E power" buck! [Posted on 2006-10-05]
This video card was purchased for five reasons: It's based on the GeForce 7 chip, having DDR3 memory, being "factory overclocked" and that 256-P2-N555-AX (the CO "superclocked") card was no longer being released and my older GeForce 6600 fan was getting old and LOUD. The 7600 GT cards are the fastest, most powerful nVidia cards available that do not require the separate PCI-E power supply (important when you have a Small Form Factor (SFF) PC like I do.) Comparable ATI cards all have the power supply requirement, making this quite the hot item to get. The accessory cables are plain and straight forward. It includes two DVI to VGA adapters as the monitor outputs are completely digital; DVI was fine for me, but might not be everyone's cup of tea. I would suggest that you download the beta nForce drivers from nVidia before replacing/installing this card. The drivers on the CD are useable, but sorely out of date. The fan is loud when the card is crunching the graphics in games like WoW, but it settles down during IE browsing sessions.
Speaking of WoW, I was able to enable all the best graphics options in the game, and the card didn't slow down once. There was no choppiness and the quality was absolutely the best I'd ever seen.
If you have a SFF PC (or a computer with a 350 watt power supply or lower) with a PCI-E video card slot (like the Shuttle pc's) and need a replacement video card, I highly recommend this card. If you have a big case, you probably can eke out even better performance with a pair of this card's big brother, the GeForce 7900 series. Just make sure you update your power supply to juice them up. The 7950 cards are out, but it's dual proc design is hotter and less powerful than two 7900's. If you're looking for a video card for a home media center PC, I suggest the passively cooled GeForce 7300. It's nearly as fast, and provided this won't be your primary gaming PC, it will handle the workload and do it quietly.
Play latest games in high detail [Posted on 2007-01-12]
This card is a great buy. If your building a midrange gaming/everday use system, this is the card for you. It play Half life 2 and Quake in high detail/resolution and I have no complaints. It is also SLI so if there comes a time down the line when I need more graphics horse power, I can add another one of these babies.
Excellent product for the price [Posted on 2007-07-21]
As a pleasant surprise, I was able to successfully install and use this card in a Vista Ultimate PC with only a 300 watt power supply (with a 12V 19A individual output rating). However, Evga recommends a system power supply with a minimum of 400 watts. That "recommendation" seemed like overkill and as it turns out, I was right (of course, YMMV).
The only issue I am having is that HD DVD playback does not work through the DVI interface to my HDCP compliant monitor. It does not work with either HP's HD DVD (OEM) Player software, nor Cyberlink's separately available Ultra PowerDVD, for a 100 bucks. Fwiw, I think Cyberlink has a very good reputation for HD DVD (and BluRay) player software support.
However, either player s/w lets me watch HD DVD movie discs via the (analog) VGA interface on my monitor, so I have a workaround.
This whole issue of HD DVD format vs. high bandwidth digital content protection (HDCP) is a PITA. Downloading upgradeable drivers, patches and firmware updates is a must do prerequisite for any PC applications. Hopefully, this support issue will go away as HD video technology and player software mature.
Don't forget to download the latest driver from the EVGA website for this video card. At time of this writing the latest version is Forceware driver 165.24, which supports something called "TurboCache". This is a s/w technique to dynamically reallocate more "shared" video RAM instead of trying to operate out of only the dedicated 256MB onboard. Normally, Vista will share something like another 272MB of system memory resulting in a little over half a GB for video applications. Using the latest driver, the total goes up to 751MB.
Of course, this may require your system to already have 2GB (or more) system memory, if it is a Vista PC. Without this feature, by using an older driver, total video memory is only around 528MB. The vote is still out on TurboCache, but it promises to be a "more is better" performance enabler for high end graphics applications.
If the primary use of this PCI-E x16 graphics adapter is gaming, and you don't need or want DirectX V10 support, plus you have an ultra high res monitor display, (or dual display application), this GPU appears to be an excellent product for the price.
Click here for more details and discount information...
|
){kind=link}