XFX Nvidia 7600 GT XXX Video Card

Features of the XFX Nvidia 7600 GT XXX

The features for the smallest of Nvidia's new 90nm GPU series are as follows:

• Pixel Pipes: 12
• Vertex Shaders: 5
• Core Clock: Nvidia Reference 560 MHz, XFX XXX Edition: 590MHz
• Core Memory Clock: 700 MHz, XFX XXX Edition: 1.6 GHz
• Pure Video Capable: Yes
• Video RAM: 256MB GDDR3
• Memory Interface: 128-bit
• SLI Capable: Yes
• Recommended PSU: 300W (single card)
• DVI Outputs: Dual

As you can see from the specs the 7600 GT is far down the line form its bigger brothers. However, that does not mean the 7600 GT is a slouch. How will the 7600 GTs David play to the Goliath benchmarks? Lets find out!

Test System Specifications

• CPU: AMD FX-60
• Hard Drive: Samsung 250GB
• RAM:OCZ PC4000 DDR Gold Edition GX XTC 3-4-3-8, 2GB (2x 1 GB)
• Silverstone Zeus 650W Peak PSU
• Mainboard: ECS Elitegroup KA1 MVP Extreme
• OS: Windows XP Pro SP2

I benchmarked the XFX 7600 GT XXX video card with both synthetic and real world tests. For the synthetic portion of the benchmarks I used 3DMARK06. 3DMARK06 is a strenuous test of both the CPU in a system as well as the graphics cards. At the end of a series of tests you are presented with an overall score for the system. The XFX 7600 GT XXX video card scored a 3557.

While that is not a score to write home about, when you consider the exceptionally low price the 7600 GT commands, the less than stellar 3DMARK score are not that bad. Plus, you can always add a second 7600 GT at a later date to increase performance via SLI.

The real world gaming tests are where gamers can really see what to expect in their favorite games. For the game tests I chose two of the most popular games currently around, F.E.A.R. and Battlefield 2. F.E.A.R. is one of the most visually intense games and is also one of the games that taxes a computer the most.

F.E.A.R. is certainly more dependant on the graphics card than the CPU in most systems. I used the F.E.A.R. built in video settings test to benchmark the 7600 GT. When F.E.A.R. choose the best settings for the 7600GT this is what I ended up with:

• Computer: Medium
• Physics: Medium
• Particle Bounce: Medium
• Shell Casings: On
• world Detail: Max
• Corpse Detail: Max
• Effects Detail: Max
• Model: Max
• Water: Medium
• Reflections & Displays: Max
• Volumetric Lighting: On
• Volumetric Density: Medium
• Graphics FSAA: Off
• Light detail: Max
• Shadows: On
• Shadows Detail: Max
• Soft Shadow: Off
• Texture- Anisotropic 4x
• Texture Resolution: Max
• Video: Max
• Resolution: 1024x768
• Shaders: Max

Interestingly, the settings above are identical to the settings F.E.A.R. chose for the 7900 GT when I reviewed it. The main difference was in the frame rates I was able to get from the 7600 GT. Keep in mind this is a budget graphics card. Minimum frame rate was 50 FPS, average frame rate was 81 FPS, and maximum frame rate was 184 frames per second. All frame rates were at a 1024 x 768 resolution. F.E.A.R. averages 100% above 40 FPS at these settings and was silky smooth and playable with no problems at all.

The next step with the F.E.A.R. benchmarks was to up the settings to the max. I ran everything maxed, with soft shadows off for these tests. This is where we begin to see the weakness in the 7600 GT. The minimum frame rate here was a pokey 17 FPS, average frame rate was 33 FPS and maximum frame rate was 77 FPS.

At these super high settings 29% of the time was less than 25 FPS, 53% of the time was 25-40 FPS and only 18% of the time were frame rates above 40 FPS. F.E.A.R. was noticeable slow and jerky at these settings and the game did not play well. With a little tweaking you could get a nice trade off between looks and performance when using the 7600 GT.

The other game I used for benchmarking the 7600 GT was Battlefield 2. BF2 is a very popular game that has some fairly hefty requirements for hardware if you want to run all the effects. I played BF2 and used FRAPS to capture frame rate information during my play. I played several different levels and used different vehicles and guns.

With BF2 maxed out, the 7600 GT was surprisingly nimble and performed very well. I noticed average frame rates during play at around 60 FPS. The environments looked very high quality and the game play was smooth and jerk free.