The XFX 7600 GS PCIe Video Card Review

Overclocking

The reference NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS comes clocked at 400MHz on the core clock at 400MHz on the memory. XFX thought that some users would like to have an overclocked card out of the box and made an Extreme Edition in addition to a card rated at the default NVIDIA suggested clock frequencies. XFX currently sells these two Geforce 7600 GS video cards. Other than the clock speeds the cards are the same.

XFX GeForce 7600GS

• Part Number: PV-T73P-UDL
• 400 MHz core clock
• 400 MHz memory clock

XFX GeForce 7600GS Extreme Edition – (~$135.00)

• Part Number: PV-T73P-UDS
• 500 MHz core clock
• 450 MHz memory clock

Both the 7600 GS and GT share the same exact GPU architecture and differ only in their clock speeds. The 7600 GT runs at 560 MHz core and 700 MHz memory clocks, while our Extreme Edition runs at 500MHz/450MHz.

Taking the heat spreader off our video card we discovered Qimonda (the old infineon) GDDR2 memory IC’s with the part number HYB18T256161AF-25. These IC’s are rated to run 400MHz at 2.0 Volts, so in reality the extreme edition is running the memory 50MHz over their rated specifications. If you are interested in finding out more about these Qimonda GDDR2 memory IC’s you can download the datasheet via their site.

Sure our card is overclocked 100MHz on the core and 50MHz on the memory right out of the box, but why not try for more? We downloaded CoolBits 2.0 (download link) and pushed our XFX GeForce 7600 GS Extreme Edition ever further.

We were able to reach a rock solid 535MHz on the core and 515MHz on the memory. This overclock means that we gained an extra 35MHz on the core and 65MHz on the memory. Now our XFX 7600 GS Extreme Edition just got a little more extreme! The Geforce 7600 GS core is a good overclocker seeing how we started out at 400/400 and ended up at 535/515 with a little work. After playing Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter for a couple of hours at 1024 x 768 we found the overclocked 7600 GS had no problems.