Whether you're dodging
incoming enemy fire from that 'helo' in Ghost Recon: Advance Warfighter, testing
that new Battlefield 2142 beta or playing your best strategy in Civilization 4;
a good videocard can truly boost your level of enjoyment in all games.
nVIDIA has increased the value quotient in the GeForce
7600GT and if you're looking for a value/mainstream videocard, it'll probably
have 7600GT stamped on its core. Gigabyte's take on the Geforce 7600GT
comes in the form of the totally silent GV-NX76T256D-RH videocard. With the
large silent cooling system, you get not just a fairly fast mainstream
videocard, you also get something that's absolutely silent.
With a retail price of $195 CDN ($172 US, £97 GBP), the
Gigabyte GV-NX76T256D-RH is definitely a steal. The videocard runs through the
PCI Express x16 bus, supports dual DVI outputs as well as TV and component
output. It is not HDCP compliant however. Whether that will be an issue or not
in the future we're not sure, but it would have been nice if Gigabyte could have
included this technology now.
The Gigabyte GV-NX76T256D-RH is certainly unique with
its dual slot Silent Pipe II Cooling system. It takes up two slots and the two
heatpipes divide the videocard core heat load between two radiators. The system
depends on system airflow so it's vital that you have your fans adjusted
properly in your system if you want to use any passively cooled videocard.
During testing the Silent Pipe II heatsink worked quite well, and its radiators
were moderately warm to the touch when benchmarks were running.
Overall the performance of the Gigabyte GV-NX76T256D-RH
was good. It did well in most tests like 3DMark05/06, FarCry, Doom 3 and Quake
4. In fact framerates were in the same region as an Asus GeForce 7800GT
videocard and that's not too shabby at all! Games like Splinter Cell: Chaos
Theory and FEAR were tougher on the GV-NX76T256D-RH, and lower resolutions are
most certainly needed to play those titles properly.
The Gigabyte GV-NX76T256D-RH overclocked very well and
hit a maximum core speed of 628 MHz, while the memory ran at a blistering 1612
MHz. You wouldn't have figured it as much, but overclocking really had little to
negligible affects on the benchmark results. Perhaps the GeForce 7600GT is
system limited with an Athlon64 4000+ processor...
Gigabyte has put together a fairly attractive package
with its GV-NX76T256D-RH. The videocard offers a great mix of value and
performance, and all in a silent package. If you're in need of a new videocard,
this a good mainstream solution to consider. It doesn't cost as much as the high
end baby's, and it doesn't perform as quickly as they can at full resolution and
with all the eye candy turned on, but as the benchmarks illustrated the Gigabyte GV-NX76T256D-RH certainly holds its own when
it's in its sweet spot. For anyone that games occassionally, or just needs a
silent videocard, this is a great mainstream example of what to look for.
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