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Though it is only a couple of months since the launch of the 7600 GT, nVidia has already gone ahead and launched another card – the 7600 GS. I suppose it’s better to drip-feed these things than launch seven products on one day – right guys?

Considering we actually have yet to look at ATI’s mid-range X1600 XT, I thought I’d look at one, as the X1600 is ATI’s direct competitor to the GS. So today we compare a passively cooled Leadtek WinFast 7600 GS with the IceQ Turbo edition of the HIS X1600 XT. These are both around the £100 mark, which is a typical budget for school goers and the like.

The 7600 GS is very similar to the 7600 GT, not only to look at but in terms of specifications as well. The core is literally identical, with 12 pixel shaders, eight pixel output engines and five vertex shaders. This is all built on a 90 micron process, keeping heat down to a minimum. This and a reduction in core speed to 400MHz (over the 560MHz on a 7600 GT) means they can actually make this card passively cooled. It is worth noting that this is not a Leadtek specific thing – the reference design for a 7600 GS is passive, so unless some manufacturer decides to put a fan on its cards to make them “better”, all of the 7600 GS cards should be this way. This is great, as silent cards usually come at a premium.

Being passive is a really strong selling point for those on a quest for silence, which increasingly seems to be most of us and is especially useful in Media PCs. However, it does require compromise. Not only is the core speed lower, but memory speed is significantly lower. Instead of the incredibly overclockable 700MHz (1,400MHz effective) GDDR3 memory seen on the 7600 GT, the 7600 GS is lumbered with cheap 400MHz (800MHz effective) GDDR2 memory, almost halving the memory bandwidth. There is still a 256MB frame buffer on the same 128-Bit controller.

The card gets warm, but not dangerously. Although the core would overclock happily, we felt that it wouldn’t be the safest thing to do considering the lack of cooling. nVidia has lowered the clocks for a good reason. We did overclock the memory slightly to 490MHz which gave between a 15 to 25 per cent increase in performance.

As it is based on the 7600 GT core, it inherits the good points such as Pixel Shader 3.0 support and Transparency AA, but also inherits its bad points such as an inability to use FSAA and full precision HDR simultaneously. For mid-range cards this isn’t so much of an issue, as such a task is pretty intensive for a card of this calibre. It also supports SLI, should you wish it.

Bundled with the card is a copy of Serious Sam II and TrackMania Nations. Although TrackMania Nations is a free download, this version includes 20 bonus tracks. PowerDVD 6 is also included, as well as the annoyingly titled muvee 3. A breakout box for component output is included, as well as a DVI to D-SUB adapter.

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