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New graphics card: Club 3D 7600GS
Posted by JLP on February 9th, 2007
Today I just replaced the old graphics card Leadtek WinFast A400 TDH (nVidia GeForce 6800 chip, NV40) with the new one, Club 3D 7600GS (nVidia GeForce 7600 chip, G73). The main reason (or excuse :)) was that the the fan on the old graphics card was extremely noisy and irritating. And it doesn’t hurt to have a more powerful graphics card so that Beryl, also known as the Windows Vista Aero killer, runs faster and smoother.
When looking for a new video card I decided it should not be too expensive, I expected it to fall into the range of 100€ to 150€. Another limitation was that I needed an AGP card, and not PCI Express, since AGP is what the motherboard supports. So in the end I was comparing nVidia 7600 GS cards to ATI/AMD Radeon X1650 Pro cards. After looking at some comparisons (here, here and here) I could see that they are very close, but on average nVidia 7600 GS has a slight advantage and nVidia was also cheaper. Another reason I liked nVidia 7600 GS more is that I’m quite disappointed with current ATI/AMD drivers for Linux. Never had any problems with nVidia drivers, which I can’t say for ATI/AMD drivers. So nVidia 7600 GS it was. More specifically, a Club 3D 7600GS.
The Club 3D 7600GS card, which costed 130€ (including shipping), came in a very nice black box. In the box you can find video converter cable, a quick installation guide and a CD with manuals and drivers. No Linux or BSD drivers are included. Come on, Club 3D, there is plenty of space left on the CD to include them. The card itself is a lot lighter than the heavy Leadtek WinFast A400 (which has a huge heat sink). Installation was easy. I just had to pull out the old card, insert the new one and it was all working just fine, since the nVidia Linux drivers (1.0-8774) were already installed on Mandriva Linux 2007.
I’m happy so far. The installation was very easy, the card works and the computer is quiet again. Now I’ll upgrade the drivers, do some more testing and maybe write something more about that later. As for the old card, which is still fast enough, I’ll try to replace the fan on it and put it back into good use. My cousin has an even older and slower graphics card (ATI Radeon 9000) and he is looking for an upgrade.
August 16th, 2007 at 16:07:36
Ohh, black rocks.
Never haerd of this ‘club’ brand before, but it does look nice.
I like the icon, heh, the fan looks a bit simple though.
Easy to clean I guess!
October 30th, 2008 at 08:29:45
Thank you for sharing this info