Comparing the features of the nVidia 7600 with its bigger brother, the 7900, it becomes obvious that the 7600 is meant to be
more of a budget card. The 7600 contains 12 pixel pipes, while the 7900 has 24. The 7600 also has 5 vertex shaders, compared
to the 8 of the 7900. The numbers in the chart below show the main differences between the 7600 series and the 7900 series.
The 7600GT
The 7600 series supports Intellisample 4.0, a very cool technology that includes the 2 new antialiasing modes.
These are transparency adaptive supersampling and transparency adaptive multisampling. Both increase the
performance and quality of antialiasing.
Front of the Card
The MSI NX7600GT has an increased Core Clock speed of 580MHz, 20MHz higher than standard 7600GTs. It also
has an increased Memory Clock speed of 1500MHz, 100MHz higher than standard 7600GTs. The MSI NX7600GT has
a special cooling design, causing it to take up 2 slots.
High Definition is quickly becoming the standard in broadcast video technology. This card efficiently processes
High Definition video files, taking the load off of the CPU. This allows for smoother video while the CPU can
perform other tasks. I downloaded a couple of 1080 videos from Microsoft. While running them in Media Player 10,
the CPU usage stuck right around 40%, with occasional spikes up to 58%, but it never went higher than 58%. There
was plenty of CPU left to open up my graphics program and edit a couple of images.
Side of Heat Sink
I repeated the previous test for the Video In, Video Out (VIVO) functionality. After installing the latest WDM
Capture Drivers from nVidia's website, I tested my Xbox to see if it would still play in VirtualDub. It worked
without a hitch.
Pair of Cards
It has a control panel option to enable and use Vivid, which allows users to change color settings. There
are four designations for Vivid. These are: Photo, Office, Game Mode, and Default. I played with the
alternate color modes, but for the most part, Default worked just fine for all the tests.
