• Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 @ 3.0GHz
• 2GB Corsair XMS DDR2-800 RAM (PC-6400)
• Gigabyte GA-DS3L Motherboard
• Zalman 600 Watt Power Supply Unit
• Western Digital 74GB Raptor
• Windows XP Professional w/SP2 and DX9.0c
• Cybermax 19-Inch CRT and Dell 2005FPW

• MSI NX8600GT Twin Turbo
• EVGA GeForce 7600 GT

• NVIDIA ForceWare 163.79

• Counter Strike Source
• Far Cry Demo
• Doom 3
• Half Life 2: Episode One

Drivers are set at default settings. All applications have control of antialiasing (AA) and anisotropic filtering (AF). With the exception of Counter-Strike's Stress Test, benchmark results are taken strictly from a gameplay perspective.

Counter-Strike remains a very popular online first person shooter (FPS). In this test, everything is set on High Detail (Model, Texture, Shader and Shadows), Water Shader at Reflect All and Color Correction Enabled. High Dynamic Range is set to Full and Vertical Sync is Disabled.

Counter-Strike Source

Benchmark results are with 2x, 4x, and 8x levels of multisampling antialiasing enabled.

CSS Stress Test - 2x Antialiasing

CSS Stress Test - 4x Antialiasing

CSS Stress Test - 8x Antialiasing

Overall, both cards hold up very well, but the NX8600GT TT definitely comes out on top. Even at 1600x1200 with 8x AA / 8x AF, the NX8600GT TT can still hit almost 100 frames per second (fps) without Twin Turbo, whereas the GeForce 7600 GT can only hit 60fps. A 67% increase isn't bad at all!

This card could definitely even hit high resolutions like 1680x1050 and still be extremely playable. The Twin Turbo feature did not overachieve, but who could complain with a few extra frames per second?

Next Page: Far Cry Demo and Doom 3 Demo Performance