by Anton Shilov
07/19/2006 | 11:55 PM
As expected, several makers of graphics cards have unveiled new products based on the GeForce 7600-series of graphics processing units (GPUs) for aging systems featuring accelerated graphics port (AGP) bus.
<%BANNER[article]%>Galaxy Technology, Leadtek Research and Sparkle have launched their GeForce 7600-series graphics cards featuring appropriate bridge, which allows to plug the boards into previous generation systems with AGP 8x bus. Galaxy and Sparkle decided to use the GeForce 7600 GS model to satisfy the needs of customers with aging machines, while Leadtek released both 7600 GS and 7600 GT models, providing a choice between value and performance.
GeForce 7600 GS graphics processor has 12 pixel shader units, 5 vertex shader units, is clocked at 400MHz and comes with 256MB of 128-bit 800MHz GDDR3 memory. Meanwhile, the model GeForce 7600 GT comes with 560MHz/1400MHz chip/memory clock-speeds.
Nowadays virtually all graphics processors are made for PCI Express bus, which is present in the vast majority of the new computers on the market. As a result of that, makers of graphics cards have to use special bridges that allow PCI Express graphics processing units (GPUs) to communicate with the AGP bus. Every additional chip costs additional money and add complexity to graphics boards, which means that AGP flavours of graphics cards cost slightly more compared to similarly configured PCI Express products.
Given relatively high clock-speeds and the number of functional units, the GeForce 7600 GT for AGP 8x may offer performance similar to the previous-generation GeForce 7800 GS graphics product in some cases or a bit lower in others.