EVGA 256-P2-N612-TX e-GeForce 7600 GTS Video Card Review :: e-GeForce 7600 GTS Features

• 560MHz Core Clock
• 1400MHz Memory Clock
• 12 Pixel Shader Pipelines
• 5 Vertex Shader Pipelines
• Pixel Shader 3.0
• Vertex Shader 3.0
• HDR
• Up to 4X RGMSAA
• Up to 8X AA (multiple modes)
• Up to 16X AF
• 90 nanometer low-k dialectic process
• 178 million transistors
• SLI

G73 is a 90 nanometer process chip manufactured in Taiwan at the TSMC foundry. NVIDIA launched their first SM 3.0 chip, the 6800, on the 130 nanometer process. Those cards tended to run hot under load. Last year, NVIDIA released the 7800GTX on the 110 nanometer process, a mid-step between the 130 nanometer process. and the 90 nanometer process. The G73 chip has 178 million transistors.

The 7600GTS is clocked at 560MHz. Strangely enough though; the card is reported by NVIDIA's 91.47 Forceware reference drivers as a 7600GS instead of a 7600GT. The difference between a 7600GT and a 7600GS is simply the core clock speed. EVGA is using a 7600GS chip and clocking it at the same speed as their standard 7600GT, meaning performance should be close or equal to a standard 7600GT. EVGA has always been good at supporting their higher-clocked cards, and this should not be a problem.

Microsoft will release a new operating system for the first time in 6 years early next year, Windows Vista. The 7600GTS is Windows Vista ready, meaning the card will run with the new Aero Glass interface. The 7600GTS supports all Pixel Shader 3.0 and Vertex Shader 3.0 features including Dynamic Branching in the Pixel and Vertex Shader, Vertex Texturing and more.

Image quality is important to me as a reviewer. After all, if the card runs great at the default settings, spicing up the game with features like Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering will make a huge impact on your gaming experience. Anti-Aliasing cleans up jagged edges caused by lines in the scene being thinner than a pixel. Anisotropic Filtering sharpens textures so that farther away surfaces are clearer than with bilinear or trilinear filtering. HDR is another feature that shows off brighter brights and darker darks in a scene as NVIDIA describes it.

Here are three shots of Oblivion to illustrate HDR in action. The first shot has HDR applied. Note the natural looking sky, the lighting in the trees, grass and buildings. Note how the brightness contrasts between different parts of the screenshot. The second shot is with the Bloom effect applied. Everything is brighter, rather than showing natural contrasts like the first shot. The third shot is without HDR enabled. Note how dull it looks.

HDR on

Bloom

HDR Off

SLI connector

NVIDIA introduced their version of SLI (Scalable Link Interface) in November 2004 with the launch of the nForce4 SLI chipset. Their Multiple Graphics solution consists of two graphics cards that use the same card, whether by the same manufacturer or not, a SLI motherboard and a SLI bridge to communicate between the two cards. I feel SLI is more elegant than Crossfire in that there's no crossover cable that can be knocked off. The 7600GTS can use SLI without a bridge, using the PCI Express bus to provide bandwidth. Interestingly, there is a SLI connector on the card.