ASUS's EN7600GT has an interesting set of contrasts. The 7600GT is an excellent video card for those wanting a silent system or wanting a good performing card without spending twice the price, as a 7900GTX or X1900XTX would do.. The size of the heatsink on the rear of the card may require some doing to fit into a Small Form Factor case like a Shuttle XPC. The idea of using heat pipes to cool the CPU area is an interesting one.
The 7600GT supports all DirectX 9.0 features including Pixel Shader 3.0 and Vertex Shader 3.0. These are the features that one should look for when purchasing a video card today, as virtually every game released today require them to operate. People with integrated GMA 950 from Intel are not able to play many of the latest games, for while the integrated graphics do support PS2.0, Hardware T+L or Vertex Shaders are not supported.
Of course, the video card arena is constantly changing. With Vista looming in the next few months, NVIDIA and ATI are likely to have high-end cards to replace the 7950 GX2 and X1900XTX. With every new generation of high-end, a new mainstream card like the 7600GT will not be far behind. But the future is as always uncertain. And the announcement of the merger between ATI and AMD makes the future even more uncertain.
