Comparison of Nvidia GeForce 7300GT / 7600GS / 7600GT

I was recently looking to upgrade the 7300GT graphics card on my childrens PC in order to get a higher FPS at 1280x1024 for some of their newer games such as Lego Batman and Spore. Based on the graphics charts here on Toms Hardware I was expecting a fair improvement with a 7600GS however I hadn't realised the large effect of the memory clock speed - I enclose the SM3.0 results from 3DMark06 for the following cards all based on the G73 core:

1. 7300GT (400MHz CPU, 400MHz 256MB DDR2 RAM): 637
2. 7600GS (400MHz CPU, 266MHz 512MB DDR2 RAM): 620
3. 7600GS (400MHz CPU, 350MHz 256MB DDR2 RAM): 724
4. 7600GS (500MHz CPU, 450MHz 256MB DDR2 RAM): 929
5. 7600GT (560MHz CPU, 700MHz 256MB DDR3 RAM): 1204

The results show that moving to the 7600GS with 266MHz RAM with 12+5 shaders is slower than the 7300GT with 8+4 shaders. Even moving to a 7600GS with similar memory would not give much improvement - really you need to move to a 7600GT or equivalent with faster DDR3 RAM.

I found the charts on Toms Hardware to be a bit misleading because they don't show the exact card specifications and that can make a difference - on the chart they have the 7300GT score as only 547 whereas my card scored 637. However the score for the 7600GT was exactly the same as my card.

Before upgrading I would recommend downloading the free 3DMark06 benchmarking application and checking your current card as depending on its clock speed it may be much better or worse than the charts would indicate.

- Simon.