[VIDEO CARD] Leadtek 7600GT 256mb AGP

[Revolution.]

Leadtek Winfast A7600GT TDH

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What is it? The Leadtek 7600GT for AGP is a very good midrange graphics card which has been adapted for the AGP graphics platform.
How much? I bought mine for $325 AUD, but it can be found for as little as $200 US online.
How long have you owned it? Since 21st October, 2006.

Pros:

• Able to run most of the latest games smoothly at high settings.
• A fantastic upgrade for those who want more gaming power but aren't ready to fork out for a new motherboard with PCI-Express.
• Performs as well as the much more expensive 7800GS AGP, which costs anywhere up to $200 AUD more.
• Performance has not been diluted for the AGP card compared to the PCI-E version.
• High clock speed of 560mhz. Memory is clocked at 1400mhz GDDR3.
• Open fan design, meaning that the fan spins slower and quieter.
• VGA and Dual-link DVI-I output on the rear of card, allowing those with older analogue monitors to use the card without the need for a VGA/DVI adapter.

• Comes with two included games, I got Trackmania:Nations and Spellforce 2.
• Will extend the life of your AGP system for another year or so.
• Excellent value for money.

Cons:

• Is more expensive than the PCI-Express version of the same card.
• May be bottlenecked by an older AGP system.
• Difficult to find, is something of a rarity at the moment. I had to get mine imported especially, hence the premium price I paid.
• Its really more of a stopgap to put off spending some cash on a decent gaming PCI-Express system.
• Whilst I haven't tried it myself, the word is that this card is not the best for overclocking, and won't be able to go much higher than 20mhz boost for both the core and memory frequencies.
• Minor con: the GeForce 7-series are unable to do both Antialiasing and HDR at the same time.

Conclusion:
It does provide an exception boost in graphical power (I upgraded from an ATi Radeon 9550 ), and so far I've had no problems with the card. I can run FEAR on high settings @ 1024x768 and get framerates above 60fps, and it runs NFS Carbon on high settings @ 1280x1024 very smoothly as well (haven't tested the framerate yet). Oblivion will run on maximum settings including HDR, anisotropic filtering etc @ about 30 fps indoors and from 20-25fps outdoors. It does hitch quite a fair bit, but turn down the settings alittle and a smooth 40fps can be achieved.
All in all its a great card, fantastic value for money compared to a similiarly performing 7800GS AGP, which will extend the life of your AGP system for the next couple of years.

Rating:
9/10.

Feel free to ask any questions about the card.

 

[Casio]

Coincidently enough, I was looking at a 7600GS today (185$) for my old AGP system (FX5200, seriously...). Do you happen to know if it's more or less then same? Or the major differences?

I'm going to assume you can't, but is it possible to run both a DVI monitor and VGA monitor at the same time, in a dual-screen set-up?

 

[Revolution.]

It might not look it, but yes, the 7600GT considerable outperforms a 7600GS in every way. The GS is still a great card for the price (I nearly bought one before I found the GT) but not a patch on a GT.
Here's some 3DMark06 results comparing different cards (not my results mind you), and whilst the GS doesn't appear on the list, it might give you a bit of an idea where the GT stands in relation to other cards.

Edit: Here's a results chart of the PCI-E versions running on a different PC with a much faster CPU.

Edit 2: Ahh I didn't see your second question.
Yes, I believe you can run two monitors at the same time if they're connected to both ports. I'll have to try that sometime