Labs

The GeForce 7600 GS is Nvidia's latest addition to the 7 series - a trimmed-down version of the 7600 GT. It has slower memory and a core clock of 400MHz, but still packs a punch.

It's also passively cooled as standard, which will please those wanting a relatively beefy but silent card for a media centre PC or simply don't want another fan adding to their PC's drone.

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In fact, with the 3D power on offer, the 7600 GS is a reasonable choice for gaming too, and at this price it could do a great deal of damage to Nvidia's own 7300 series, as well as several other cards aimed at media centres.

Naturally, performance can't match the GT, but our tests showed it can hold its own in the latest games against the old 6800. Also, it's a cut above the 6600 GT. Results of 25fps and 18fps in Far Cry and Call of Duty 2 respectively suggest some games should be playable at 1,280 x 1,024, but you may have to switch down to 1,024 x 768 for others.

A bonus is that this is the cheapest Nvidia card with an SLI connector, so there's the potential for better performance in silence. And the ability to play back high-definition 1080p video makes it an even more obvious choice for media centres. And just to complete matters, features such as dual-link DVI (for high-resolution displays) are yet more reasons to consider the 7600 GS.