Which GeForce 7600GS AGP is the best?

I got my hands on five different versions of the GeForce 7600 GS. This Nvidia GPU is quite a popular choice for Windows XP retro builds, so here’s a short comparison.

Does the brand matter? Passive or active cooling? Which one is the best overall choice? Let’s find out.

Contenders:

MSI 7600GS 256MB DDR2 128bit Core: 400Mhz Memory: 800Mhz

GIGABYTE 7600GS 256MB DDR2 128bit Core: 400Mhz Memory: 800Mhz

ASUS 7600GS 256MB DDR2 128bit Core: 400Mhz Memory: 800Mhz

GAINWARD 7600GS 256MB DDR3 128bit Core: 450Mhz Memory: 1100Mhz

GALAXY 7600GS 256MB DDR3 128bit Core: 500Mhz Memory: 1450Mhz

Test Settings:

Hardware: AMD Athlon XP 2500+ 1.8Ghz (Barton), 2.5GB RAM Dual Channel DDR400,

Operating system: WindowsXP 32bit SP3

Drivers: nvidia ForceWare 307.83

Each graphics card was prepared according to the following procedure:

• New thermal paste (Arctic MX-4) was applied

• The card was warmed up by running games until idle and load temperatures stabilized

• Four synthetic benchmarks were performed: 3DMark 2001 SE, 3DMark 2005, 3DMark 2006, and FurMark 1.6.5

ASUS, MSI, and Gigabyte show very similar results across the board, which is expected. They share a similar PCB design—passive cooling, the same memory modules, and identical clock speeds. Gainward and Galaxy Microsystems show slightly higher figures due to having much faster DDR3 memory chips and higher-clocked GPU cores.

Temperatures were measured using HWiNFO32 in degrees Celsius. The ambient temperature was about 24°C. The minimum temperature was recorded at the beginning of 3DMark 2001 SE, while the maximum was recorded during FurMark, which was the final test.

Obviously, the “hottest” graphics cards in this comparison are the passively cooled ones. I recorded temperatures as high as 89°C under load, which is actually quite common for this generation of GPUs when they are passively cooled. However, it’s worth noting that these high temperatures depend on the specific unit. For other samples of the same Gigabyte or ASUS cards in my collection, I measured maximum temperatures of around 60–70°C under load. It’s a bit of a silicon lottery.

Although this didn’t seem to directly impact benchmark scores or stability, it’s still wise to ensure better airflow in the case for this reason alone.

Conclusion: Two cards from this comparison stand out in my opinion: the Galaxy 7600 GS, featuring a superior cooling solution from Zalman and offering the best overall performance, and the Gigabyte 7600 GS, which provides a great balance between performance and passive cooling temperatures. It’s a pity that passively cooled DDR3 versions of the GeForce 7600 GS were never released—that would have been interesting.

So there you have it. All of these cards should deliver solid performance for a Windows XP gaming rig, but be mindful of the higher temperatures on some passively cooled versions of this GPU.