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XFX Geforce 7600GT Fatal1ty - Cooler and Faster than others

Videocards/VGA Reviews by geoffrey @ 2007-01-12

With the official release of the NVIDIA G80 based high end video cards in November last year, it is only a matter of months before we see new mid-range mayhem released for every budget minded gamer out there. At the very last moment XFX decided to satisfy gamers with one of the last G70 based video cards, their 7600GT Fatal1ty edition features passive cooling and faster clock speeds at a competitive price. How much faster? We find out.

Inside the box & specifications

Inside the box

The box has Jonathan all over it, whether that’s a good thing or not, I’ll let you decide, take a look:

Madshrimps (c)

Inside we find the following goodies:

Madshrimps (c)

XFX GEFORCE 7600 GT FATAL1TY

Driver CD and manual

The video card draws its power from the PCI Express slot and doesn’t require a separate power connector from the power supply like its AGP brother. There aren’t many extras in this box, no games or goodies, while this makes the bundle appear quite sober, if it reduces cost and focuses on providing affordable fast video cards, it can only be a good thing for budget-wise gamers.

Specifications

NVIDIA 80nm G73 core
- core clock: 650MHz

Samsung 256Mb (4x64Mb) GDDR3 with 128 bit interface
- memory clock: 1600MHz

Silent But Deadly (SBD) passive heatpipe cooler

Dual Link DVI

Integrated HDTV decoder

TV-out

SLI ready

PCI-Express 16x

Stock speeds of the original 7600GT reference design were 560Mhz on the GPU, 1400Mhz on the memory, it also used a 90nm production process. The XFX Fatal1ty edition uses 80nm process and has no issue running at 650Mhz GPU which is quite impressive, seeing as the average overclock of the reference 90nm 7600GT was below 650Mhz! XFX also decided to up the ante on the memory side and it’s running at 1600Mhz which is also quite a boost from the reference speed.

More pictures

Two heat pipes transfer the heat generated by the GPU and memory to a large aluminum heatsink fitted on the back of the video card. The card relies on case cooling airflow to be cooled effectively; in our testing we’ll find out how hot the GPU gets when put under 3D load.

Madshrimps (c)

Comment from SuAside @ 2007/01/12

i kinda miss a X1950Pro thrown into the mix... (and a real case

)

Comment from jmke @ 2007/01/12

X1950Pro is out the 7600GT league, the 7900GS is the X1950Pro match which Geoffrey compared earlier here: http://www.madshrimps.be/gotoartik.php?articID=523

Comment from Massman @ 2007/01/12

I really like the card's specs, 80nm should be one good overclocker

Comment from jmke @ 2007/01/12

SusAside, you might have a point, the X1950Pro performs quite on par with the 7600GT in this review: http://www.trustedreviews.com/graphi...1ty-7600-GT/p4

Comment from HitenMitsurugi @ 2007/01/13

Depends on what graph and game you're looking at, and what the bottleneck in the system is

upping res/AA gives you this:
http://www.trustedreviews.com/images...924-graph9.gif

Which is another extreme case, i know, but just as valid. The problem is that they don't mention the system test configuration
If you look at how cs:source scales, you see a big cpu bottleneck at 1280x1024, with all the cards performing the same, and only some spacing apart as the resolution increases. If you'd only look at that one resolution, you'd draw the wrong conclusions.

and the price difference isn't that big, in germany u can find x1950pro's for €165 for the bog standard cards, but a more general pricerange is €180-200

edit: ah yes they do: "To test I used our standard selection of benchmarks in our reference Intel 975XBX “Bad Axe” motherboard, with an Intel X6800 Core 2 Duo, coupled with 2GB of Corsair CMX1024-6400C4 running at 800MHz with latency settings of 4-4-4-12." Strange that even that processor bottlenecks these mid range cards.

Comment from SuAside @ 2007/01/13

well, it might be 35 euros more expensive, but it's still ATI's best mainstream card (price/performance). a comparison with that is always educational i'd say (and a good reference).

Comment from jmke @ 2007/01/13

the 7600GT is competitor to X1650XT in fact, as seen in this review: http://www.madshrimps.be/vbulletin/s...ad.php?t=29022

unfortunately Geoffrey changed test configs, so he couldn't reuse the numbers of his X1950Pro tests, the cards have been since send back to companies.

Comment from flokel @ 2007/01/28

Can somebody tell me how high the 7600gt fatality is ?

I'm worried if the card fits in my silverstone lc-16m

regards,
Flo

Comment from geoffrey @ 2007/01/30

Height
Zalman HD135 ---> 135mm
Silverstone LC-16M ---> 170mm

XFX 7600GT Infin1ty ----> +-150mm

Should fit in there.

Comment from jmke @ 2007/07/10

* Cheapest "stock" 7600 GT is now only €79
http://www.alternate.de/html/product...wTechData=true
* The Fatality version is only €119
http://www.alternate.de/html/product...wTechData=true

* Cheapest "stock" 8600 GT €99
http://www.alternate.de/html/product...wTechData=true
* OC'd XFX 8600 GT €119
http://www.alternate.de/html/product...l?artno=JAXXHB
* XFX Fatality 8600 GT €149
http://www.alternate.de/html/product...wTechData=true

will be interesting to compare these cards, don't ya think

will be testing them the coming week; shown down of NVIDIA low/mid end

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