Introduction

When NVIDIA introduced their mid-range Geforce 7 series it became an instant success, the 7600GT delivered a formidable performance jump over the companies previous mid-range card, the 6600GT. In our review today we set out to see if NVIDIA does it again with the 8 series.

The Geforce 8 series introduced us to the “GTS” suffix, first found on the 8800 GTS and later used on the mid-range products too. The 8600 GTS was introduced at a price point not much lower than that of the 8800 GTS 320Mb, people expected this card to be “the” next NVIDIA mid-range card. Unfortunately the 8600 GTS disappointed in the performance charts, falling well behind the 8800 GTS 320Mb. At ~€200 the 8600 GTS definitely is not the killer deal many were waiting for.

While it’s true that the 7600 GT was initially introduced at a similar price of ~€200, its price/performance was very good at the time. Today the Geforce 7600 GT cards still available stores have enjoyed a nice price cut, available at prices as low as ~€90, furthermore we’ve seen an increase in specifications of these cards thanks to an improvement in the manufacturing process. The first batch of 7600 GT were at 90nm, the newer ones at 80nm. We reviewed a XFX 80nm based 7600 GT here. The XFX 7600 GT Fatality featured higher GPU speeds and memory clocks, these improvements have now been implemented in XFX entry level models, which feature the same increased clock speeds.

For our comparison today we bought a XFX 7600 GT 256Mb GDDR3 video card and compare it to two new comers from Sparkle. The first one is from Sparkle straight, a Geforce 8600 GT 256Mb GDDR3 available in stores for ~€99, the second is from Sparkle’s daughter firm, the Calibre 8600 GT 512Mb GDDR3, this factory overclocked unit is priced at ~€150.

From left to right: Sparkle 8600 GT , XFX 7600 GT, Calibre 8600 GT



Let’s compare specifications:

	Sparkle 8600 GT	Calibre 8600GT	XFX 7600GT	Original 7600GT
Productionprocess	80	80	80	90
Core clock	540 MHz	630 MHz	650 MHz	560 MHz
Shader clock	1180 MHz	1404 MHz	-	-
Memory clock	1400 MHz	1620 MHz	1600 MHz	1400 MHz
Amount of memory	256	512	256	256
Memory bus width	128	128	128	128

The “new” 7600 GT at 80nm enjoys a 16% boost in GPU clocks and 14% memory speed, the Calibre enjoys an equal 16% boost in GPU speed and 15% memory, the Shader clocks are overclocked ~18%.

Let’s take a closer look at our new mid-range cards ->