The 7600GS from GIGABYTE is an interesting video card. Unfortunately, the card came bare with no bundle or accessories, and I had no HDMI capable monitor to test it with. With the proliferation of video cards on the market today supporting only the DVI-I and D-Sub adapter, HDMI at the moment is a niche market. HDTVs and HDMI monitors require HDMI connectors or an adapter. As we move further into an era where HD-DVD and Blu-Ray content replace DVDs I believe video cards like the GV-NX76G256HI-RH will become more the norm. The era of HD content is here and the HDCP requirements will push HDMI to the forefront.
From a features point of view, the 7600GS is set in Shader Model 3.0 territory. With the advent of Microsoft Vista, Shader Model 4.0 and DirectX 10 come into the forefront. It is likely that we will see the replacement for the 7600GS sometime later this year based upon GeForce 8xxx technology. But that is in the future, and the 7600GS from GIGABYTE has good performance for the price at the moment and the GIGABYTE GV-NX76G256HI-RH card has the unique feature of supporting the HDMI standard. The card came packaged in the regular 7600GS box and had no bundle as we got one of the first prototype HDMI cards. This card and the similar but faster and pricier 7600GT card from ASUS are among the first HDMI video cards on the market.
Score:
- Performance- 6
- Features- 8
- Compatibility- 9
- Software- 7
- Overall Value 8
- Support- 6
- Price- 8
- Ease of Use- 10
- Availability- 10
- Setup- 10
Total: 82
