The GeForce 6600 GT is certainly one of the most successful graphics card series in history. 18 months since the release of the very first GeForce 6600 GT cards they are still selling quite well. However, sales are now starting to slow as the NV43 replacement begins to hit shelves. The new GeForce 7600 GT is based on the G73 core which boasts several key advantages over the older GeForce 6600 GT. Advantages that make the GeForce 7600 GT more powerful in todays latest 3D games.

The GeForce 7600 GT has been a long time coming as the GeForce 7 series consisted of just two products for so long. Initially the GeForce 7 series was just an addition to the pre-existing GeForce 6 series, consisting of the GeForce 7800 GT and GTX. Later the low-end GeForce 7300GS followed, while the mainstream segment was being filled by the GeForce 6800GS and 6600 GT. Both of these mainstream products will now be replaced by the GeForce 7600 GT.

The G73 core of the GeForce 7600 GT measures just 125 x 125mm, opposed to the original G70 core which measured 334 x 334mm. The die shrinkage has been made possible due to the new 90nm process. The smaller die of course brings a number of advantages to the table for the G73. For example the core can now accept much higher frequencies without running into any problems and the thermal output can also be reduced.

Of course NVIDIA are hoping the GeForce 7600 GT can evolve into the successor of the 6600 GT and realistically it should. Given that the 7600 GT has been designed to out perform the GeForce 6800GS, you can only assume that it is going to be a Radeon X1600XT killer. This is most likely the primary reason for ATis recent announcement of the Radeon X1700 series. In order to make the GeForce 7600 GT as successful as the 6600 GT, NVIDIA will need to be tight with their pricing and they have been.

Already GeForce 7600 GT cards can be purchased online for under $200 US, in fact some cards are retailing for as low as $170 US. The original ASUS GeForce 6600 GT card was reviewed here at Legion Hardware in December 2004 and at the time cost $230 US. Todays review is based on the new ASUS GeForce 7600 GT graphics card which is currently retailing for just $190 US. Looking at the specifications of the 7600 GT it should deliver exceptionally good performance.

Just like the GeForce 6600 GT the 7600 GT utilizes a 128-bit memory bus and comes configured with 256MB of memory. However, the 7600 GT has another 6.4GB/s of memory bandwidth at its disposal thanks to a number of factors, such as the higher core and memory clock frequencies. The core has been increased from the 500MHz of the 6600 GT to 560MHz for the 7600 GT. The memory frequency has also been boosted from 1GHz to 1.4GHz.

However, the most important improvements focus on the pipeline structure of the GeForce 7600 GT. The GeForce 6600 GT consisted of 3 vertex shaders 8 texture/fragment shader pipelines and 4 ROPs. The 7600 GT on the other hand features 5 vertex shader units, 12 texture/fragment shader pipelines and 8 ROPs. This is what gives the 7600 GT the majority of its extra grunt and will help it overcome graphics cards such as the Radeon X1600XT, X800XL and GeForce 6800GS.