Watching the 7600 GT go through 3DMark was simply thrilling. I had never seen the program run so smoothly on something branded as a budget gamer’s card. Each section of the GPU tests was smooth with the frame rate consistently high. Even on the very demanding “Mother Nature” segment, the 7600 GT muscled its way through. Comparatively, the Radeon card really did look more like something one would consider a “budget card”. Going through most of the tests, the Radeon delivered adequately, but on the more demanding sections, the frame rate would drop way down, and you would start to see the slide-show effect. Once you turn on Anti Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering, both cards take a performance hit, but the GeForce will still have the upper hand at all times. The story was exactly the same for Aquamark3. The 7600 GT soared through every single stage without issue. The Radeon, while doing OK, went much slower; it obviously does not have the muscle of its rival. The numbers speak for themselves.
Conclusion
If you’ve only got $150, but still want a very realistic and rewarding gaming experience, this is the card for you. Period. As much as I do like the Radeon line, the X1600XT simply can’t keep up. On top of that, in a year or two, you’ll likely be able to get 7600 GT’s off of eBay for cheap SLI action (if you have an SLI motherboard of course), so there’s a inexpensive upgrade path for you too. In the interest of full disclosure, it is important to note that at the time of this writing, you can get Radeon x1600xt’s for just a little over $100 USD online. I still say for about $30-$50 more you’ll get a better gaming experience with the 7600 GT, but you should know your options.
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