X-bit labs

Extreme Voltmodding of the Nvidia GeForce 7600 GS DDR-2 256MB Reference Graphics Cards

Category: Video

by Oleg Golubovich

[ 10/04/2006 | 12:04 PM ]

We continue our volt-modding guides with a new article devoted to the modification of the Nvidia GeForce 7600 GS reference cards equipped with 256MB of DDR-2 memory. Find out more about how to hit the top megahertz from our detailed article.

Table of contents:

• Volt-Modding of EVGA e-GeForce 7600 GS
  
• Disclaimer
  
• Ingredients
  
• Core Volt-Mod
  
• Memory Volt-Mod
  
• Testbed and Methods
  
• Closer Look at XFX GeForce 7600 GT
  
• Performance
  
• Conclusion
  

The clock is ticking its seconds, minutes and hours that amount to days and weeks and months… Perhaps time is the only thing in this world that everyone has, but you can’t control or halt it no matter what you try.

It seems it was just yesterday that I was shopping for the newest GeForce 6600 series cards, but now they are a thing of the past. Their place is occupied and their glory of being the best buy in the mainstream sector is taken over by Nvidia’s 7600 series products, 7600 GS and 7600 GT. It is actually the same story told anew: the same graphics chip, but different memory. The different frequencies provide different performance and, as a consequence, determine the market positioning of the products.

A year ago the core of the ordinary 6600 could be overclocked to the level of the senior model or even higher, but what do we have today? The reviewers are all talking about poor overclockability of the 7600 GS series and do not recommend it to overclockers, but few of them point at the reason for such a dissimilar behavior of absolutely identical chips on different cards – a greatly reduced voltage.

But what if this voltage is increased? Let’s try it out? We’ve got an EVGA GeForce 7600 GS card for this test. It’s time to check it out in action.

In this review I will volt-mod the EVGA card and compare its performance with that of a 7600 GT made by XFX. We’ll see if the junior model can beat the senior one. Let’s first take a look at the XFX which is an interesting product in itself.