XFX 7600 GT Fatal1ty Graphics Card Review

Features & Specifications

The main features of the XFX 7600 GT Fatal1ty Graphics Card are the same as those of the XFX 7600GT XXX that I reviewed previously. The difference between the XFX 7600 GT Fatal1ty Graphics Card and the XXX version is in the clock speeds and the type of cooler used for the card, whereas the XXX version uses a fan to keep the GPU cool, the Fatal1ty version of the 7600 GT is completely passively cooled with a large finned heat sink. That means no fans and dead silent operation during gaming. This makes the XFX 7600 GT Fatal1ty Graphics Card an excellent choice for a media center PC. The clock speeds of the XFX 7600 GT Fatal1ty Graphics Card are 650MHz on the core and 1.6GHz on the memory. To compare the XFX 7600 GT XXX has a 590MHz core speed and 1.6GHz memory clock. Check out the XFX site for more details on the specifications of the XFX 7600 GT Fatal1ty Graphics Card.

Test Machine

The machine I used for testing the XFX 7600 GT Fatal1ty Graphics Card has the following specifications:

• CPU- Intel QX6700
• Mainboard- EVGA 680i
• RAM- PNY XLR8 PC2-8500 2GB
• Video Card- PNY 8800 GTS 320MB
• Video Drivers- NVIDIA 93.71
• Display- HP 30” LP3065
• OS- Windows XP Pro SP2

Benchmarks & Testing

3DMark06

To test both the single XFX 7600 GT Fatal1ty Graphics Card and both cards in SLI I used 3Dmark06, FEAR, and Battlefield 2142. First up was 3DMark06 which I ran at default settings and recorded the following information for a single XFX 7600 GT Fatal1ty Graphics Card.

• Total 3DMarks- 4018
• SM2.0- 1527
• HDR/SM3.0- 1379
• CPU- 4021
• Return to Proxycon- 12.451
• Firefly Forest- 12.996
• Canyon Flight- 12.166
• Deep Freeze- 15.419
• CPU1- 1.378
• CPU2- 1.878

Adding in a second XFX 7600 GT Fatal1ty graphics card in SLI mode the 3DMark06 numbers looked like this:

• Total 3DMarks- 7186
• SM2.0- 2904
• HDR/SM3.0- 2592
• CPU- 3890
• Return to Proxycon- 23.531
• Firefly Forest- 24.864
• Canyon Flight- 22.306
• Deep Freeze- 29.527
• CPU1- 1.305
• CPU2- 1.858

To compare 3DMark results, the 7600 GT XXX from XFX could only muster a single card score of 3557. That represents a 461-point advantage to the Fatal1ty version. Keep in mind that the review of the 7600 GT XXX was performed on a test machine using an AMD FX-62, which is much slower than the QX6700 I used for these reviews. That will skew the numbers in favor of the Fatal1ty version.

FEAR

The next test up was with FEAR. Since the XFX 7600 GT Fatal1ty Graphics Card isn’t nearly as high end as the 8800 cars I have been testing I cranked the settings in FEAR down quite a bit. I used a screen resolution of 1280 x 1024 with 4x AA and 4X AF with all other settings on max with no soft shadows used. Using the FEAR in game test loop I recorded the following information for a single XFX 7600 GT Fatal1ty Graphics Card:

• Min- 19 fps
• Avg- 36 fps
• Max- 78 fps

The percentages show that a single XFX 7600 GT Fatal1ty Graphics Card spent 20% of the time below 25 fps, 56% of the time between 25 and 40 fps and 24% of the time above 40 fps. In SLI mode at the same settings the following data was recorded:

• Min- 37 fps
• Avg- 70 fps
• Max- 218

As you can see, adding a second XFX 7600 GT Fatal1ty Graphics Card in FEAR makes a huge difference in performance. The percentages showed that only 2% of the time was frame rates between 25-40 fps and 98% of the time frame rates were greater than 40 fps.

Battlefield 2142

The next test up was with Battlefield 2142 which I ran at 1600 x 1200, all settings on high and 4X AA. I used Fraps to record frame rate data in game and recorded the following results for a single card:

• Min- 24
• Avg- 29.283
• Max- 33

If Battlefield 2142 is your game this is a great card for you. Adding in a second XFX 7600 GT Fatal1ty Graphics Card in SLI mode made no difference in the performance of the game. The frame rates were within one or two fps of the results for a single card.

Overall, the XFX 7600 GT Fatal1ty Graphics Card performs very well in single and SLI mode. Depending on the type of games, you prefer you might not even need SLI cards to get great frame rates. The nice part about the passively cooled XFX 7600 GT Fatal1ty Graphics Card other than it is dead quiet is the fact that it is cheap. You can buy a XFX 7600 GT Fatal1ty Graphics Card for about $160 online making this a great bang for the buck. My only complaint is that the pasive heat sink blocked the PCI slot behind the card in my test machine.