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The Verdict

Okay. Interesting. Now despite what you might think I'm not toasting this product as I honestly really respect what BioStar is trying to accomplish with this product. This model of the 7600 GS is targeted at enthusiast hardware freaks that can not afford a high-end card. I mean let's face it, if you have only 125 bucks as maximum to spend then this is a very fun product as you can tweak everything you want and get some pretty good results while doing it. With the tweak tools at hand you can get closer toward GeForce 7900 GS performance. Now for 50 bucks more I would definitely go with that card, but if you can't then this by far was the most overclockable GeForce 7600GS we have ever tested.

I'd like to applaud BioStar for having the balls to include Voltage regulation options into their overclocking software. I don't think that NVIDIA will like it very much but as far as I know this is the first time ever that a manufacturer is allowing this. Boosting the core voltage of your GPU can drastically improve your overclocking results if you create the right conditions.

There however are two petite imperfections with this product. The first: if you are not Asian you will despise the overclocking software. So my recommendation on that line is very simple, make the software more user-friendly by allowing skins. Cultures differ, thus taste differs. This product to be sold in Europe or the USA needs a better GUI, clear and simple. The same goes for the box design by the way. I mean, I'm only talking about the GUI here as the actual implementation of the software is pretty good, even a novice can overclock straight out of the box with the help of the "Fuzzy" mode.

And if you can't even comprehend that Fuzzy mode then click on a button called auto overclock and instantly your GPU is clocked at for example 565 MHz and 1666 on the memory. That's just really good.

The real tweakers however will end up with software like our home-built RivaTuner.

The second issue I find to be lacking is the cooler. If this product had a Zalman cooler not only would it be a tad more silent but it would cool better as well and there's much to be said about that as this product is an overclockers edition card. If you do that then as a manufacturer you must provide the environment to allow that as well. I do understand the dilemma though as this is a budget product, and niche coolers would make the product much more expensive. Despite the temperatures we have seen the overclocks still were awesome though.

The GS in general then. It's a Series 7 product thus is supports all the features you seek in a modern graphics card like HDR, Shader Model 3 and all the features that the Series 7 products entail. That includes SLI functionality. The GeForce 7600 GS from BioStar offers a great amount of bang for your bucks and when your performance starts to suck, you can add another card into your SLI system and double up that performance.

That being said, for the money you'll receive a real fun product that will allow you to tweak where no man has gone before. And the GS by itself, well hey it's already a lot of bang for your bucks so you can't go wrong there either way.

Highly recommended for people on a 125 USD budget.