Inno3D GeForce 7600 GST 256MB DDR3

The Verdict

I can be rather short today. The Inno3D GeForce 7600 GST VGA card definitely comes recommended for the people who want to be able to play a game decently for not a lot of money. It offers good bang for your hard earned bucks. And hey .. if you can find this card up for 150-160 USD is really is a good deal. However, if you have to pay a higher price in the store .. then my recommendation simply would be just go for a full-fetched GeForce 7600 GT as they can be found for roughly 175 USD/EUR these days. That card is slightly faster and on it's end can be overclocked higher.

It is obvious that although not intended as a card for the hardcore gamer, it will still be able to play all of the latest games if you stick at 10x7 and 12x10 and you'll even be able to enable additional eye-candy in the form of AF and AA. It packs all of the hottest features implemented into the Geforce 7 Series but it does not carry that hefty price tag.

What about building a Home Theater PC with this card ? Well you could .. due to it's small size, low cost and its HDTV out functionality (no HDCP support though), but you'd really need to change the cooler as it's just too noisy for a HTPC. The 7600 GS(T) graphics core itself could be ideal for a HTPC setup that requires intermittent gaming yet excellent SD/HD decoding where the biggest news is H.264 decoding acceleration functionality also. The H.264 (MPEG4-AVC) looks to be the next big codec. H.264 is part of both the BluRay and HD-DVD's specifications. H.264 is already approved by Japan and most of Europe for use in their DTV broadcasts.

So it goes like this: the Inno3D GeForce 7600 GST offers an exceptional amount of bang for your bucks and when your performance starts to run dry, simply add another card into your SLI system and double up that performance. I only have one negative the reference cooler is really underprivileged when it comes to noise levels .. it can be heard for sure as it is just spinning hard and quite loud. When you are playing games you'll be able to hear it.

None-the less .. in every other aspect the Inno3D GeForce 7600 GST is a charmer. Two years ago we had to pay 400 USD for this level of performance, and we called that product the GeForce 6800 GT :)

The product positions itself right between the low mid-range 7600GS and the high mid-range 7600GT, the 7600GST is a deceiving (in a positive way) card in that respect. Clocked at 500MHz/1400MHz (core/memory respectively) featuring 256MB gDDR3 memory with 12 pixel pipelines and a price tag of 160 USD/EUR it'll bring you a stack load of raw gaming performance for that money. You can easily tweak it towards GeForce 7600 GT performance as it's very close to it anyway due to it's faster than reference clock speeds and yes .. it most certainly will not disappoint.

Thanks go out to Inno3D for supplying us this review sample.
 

	Inno3D GeForce 7600 GST 256MB DDR3 (PCI-Express) Product:  256 MB Graphics card Manufacturer: InnoVision Info: InnoVision - Inno3D Price: 160 EUR