Having the latest and greatest video card is something most gamers dream about.  Unfortunately, not all of us can part with $500 just to get that extra few frame rates.  For those of us on a budget, we look to the midrange and budget cards for some of the latest features, but a little less horsepower.  The 7600GT is a great example of a card that delivers the features of the high-dollar cards and still has enough horsepower to play your games.  Gigabyte has taken the 7600GT a step further and made their card silent.  Let's take a look at their new card and see how it performs.

Specification

Features

90nm Process Technology
Delivers higher performance through blazing clock rates

CineFX 4.0 Engine
Through CineFX 4.0 engine that allows developers to create unique 3D game features and effects in both game animation and high-definition video. Gamers can get plus benefit from CineFX 4.0 that streamlines the creation of complex visual effects.

Intellisample™ 4.0
The industry's fastest antialiasing delivers ultra-realistic visuals, with no jagged edges, at lightning-fast speeds. Visual quality is taken to new heights through a new rotated grid sampling pattern, advanced 128 Tap sample coverage, 16x anisotropic filtering, and support for transparency supersampling and multisampling.

UltraShadow™ II
Enhances the performance of bleeding-edge games, like id Software's Doom 3, that feature complex scenes with multiple light sources and objects. 2nd-generation technology delivers more than 4x the shadow processing power over the previous generation.

nView^® Multi-Display Technology
Advanced technology provides the ultimate in viewing flexibility and control for multiple monitors. NVIDIA GPUs are enabled to support multi-displays, but graphics cards vary.

PureVideo™
PureVideo™ technology ensures support for new video formats, while its motion estimation engine (MEE) allows the card to record and play video files simultaneously without interrupting system performance. An added value PureVideo™ provides is its high-definition MPEG-2 and WMV HD hardware accelerator that take on much of the heavy lifting during playback of Hi-Def video. Other video playback enhancements include a unique color correction mechanism that will help to create a home theater from a PC.

OpenGL 2.0^® Optimizations and Support
Ensure top-notch compatibility and performance for all OpenGL 2.0 application.

Microsoft^® DirectX^® 9.0C
Ensures the best performance and application compatibility for all DirectX 9.0C applications.

Microsoft^® DirectX^® 9.0 Shader Model 3.0
Provide infinite program command length creating photorealistic scenes and environments in games, without compromising overall PC performance.

PCI Express
Designed to run perfectly with the next-generation PCI Express bus architecture. This new bus doubles the bandwidth of AGP 8X delivering over 4 GB/sec. in both upstream and downstream data transfers.

RoHS Compliant
As a citizen of the global village, GIGABYTE exert ourselves to be a pioneer in environment care. Give the whole of Earth a promise that our products do not contain any of the restricted substances in concentrations and applications banned by the RoHS Directive, and are capable of being worked on at the higher temperatures required for lead free solder. One Earth and GIGABYTE Cares!

Silent-Pipe II Technology
Silent-Pipe II technology that generates natural airflow to provide more efficient cooling without the use of a heat sink or fan. This is achieved through a unique design that draws cool air in through a new proprietary front-flow thermal module to remove heat from the heat sink on the VGA card. GIGABYTE Silent-Pipe II Features and Benefits:
*Feature 1. Proprietary front-flow thermal module: the first Dual-slot heat pipe solution to utilize a convection slot at the back of the chassis to increase thermal dissipation.
*Feature 2. Natural convection design: Silent-Pipe II technology artfully uses the temperature difference between the inside and outside of chassis, creating natural system convection.
*Feature 3. High-precision die-casting process: uses the latest high-precision die forming technology to increase the thermal conductivity of the material that makes up the heat sink.
*Feature 4. SLI ready: designed for compatibility with dual card configurations.
*Feature 5. High performance heat pipe with sintered powder wicks: with the industry's best powder-style pure copper heat pipe for ultra efficient thermal conductivity.
*Feature 6. 3D performance ready: designed stability during demanding 3D applications.
*Feature 7. Integrated architecture design: heat pipe and GPU actually make contact to provide unequalled heat conductivity.

GIGABYTE V-tuner2
Real time monitoring the temperature, cooling fan speed and voltage of the graphics card, and dynamically control the working frequency and fan speed to let your graphics card always run at the best condition. GIGABYTE V-tuner2 provides a user-friendly and simple interface for overclocking, and allows users to dynamically adjust core and memory clocks.

* The function will probably be different according to the spec of product and the support of hardware architecture.

GIGABYTE @VGA
To make it easier update the VGA BIOS than before and help users update the latest VGA BIOS from Internet automatically.

SLI™ Technology
Delivers up to 2X the performance of a single GPU configuration for unparalleled gaming experiences by allowing two graphics cards to run in parallel. The must-have feature for performance PCI Express graphics, SLI dramatically scales performance on 60 top PC games.