Page 1
Biostar GeForce 7600 GS Overclocking Edition w/ V-Ranger
Info: BioStarPrice: 125 USD/EUR.
Helleuh ! And welcome to yet another NVIDIA GeForce series 7 article. Today we'll be looking at a product from Biostar. Now I know I promised that we would not review GeForce 7600 GS cards anymore because, well, I've said everything there is to be said about them.
But then Biostar release a GS with something new. That being an overclocked edition which allows Voltage regulation in the graphics core. Okay, that's guruísh geek stuff. So I decided to squeeze in one more 7600 GS review for this one occasion only.
Now why do I find this so interesting ? We already know that the 7600 GS is a very overclockable product. For the budget minded people out there for not a lot of money they get to play games at 10x7 and even 12x10 at acceptable framerates. Once you overclock a graphics card you'll squeeze a bit more performance out of it and thus can get higher framerates.
Overclocking depends on a lot of factors, yet the one common factor that NVIDIA never has allowed to be changed is Voltage regulation. Basically when you cram more volts into a GPU core it will go higher in it's clockspeed, we all know this with memory, CPU and Northbridge overclocks. The same goes for your GPU.
A manufacturer like NVIDIA will always prohibit or at the very least limit voltage regulation for two reasons: it can be dangerous if you do not know what you are doing, and more volts means more heat. In the end this could mean a lot of returned products. Typically a higher voltage could only be achieved by changing a resistor on the graphics card effectively losing warranty.
If however a manufacturer unlocks the function and pro-actively advertises and markets a product with voltage regulation then it's legit and that manufacturer must offer a full warranty. You see the problem here ? The risk of damaging the product is much higher yet Biostar must offer that warranty and they can change the agreements on risks all they want.
Anyway, today we test an in-expensive 7600 GS, and BioStar is offering that voltage regulation on it. Let's tweak where no man has gone before shall we ?
