Battlefield 2 - 1400x1050

Frames Per Second	Min	Max	Avg
MSI NX7600GT	27	77	49.63
NVIDIA 7600GT	27	78	48.98
HIS X1800GTO	31	74	49.91

Battlefield 2 is handled pretty easily by all three cards. The NX7600GT seems to perform a bit more smoothly for the first half before suffering some of the same drops as the reference card at the 70 second mark.

As for the image quality, the game looks very good on the NX7600GT. The grass effects as well as distance detail is quite nice and unlike some earlier GeForce hardware I've used in the past, the NX7600GT doesn't suffer from "disappearing" polygons.

Overclocking and Final Words

We had some high hopes of overclocking given the enormous cooler MSI includes. We should also mention that if you're uncomfortable using an unsupported piece of software such as Coolbits, the NX7600GT supports Dynamic Overclocking Technology, aka, D.O.T. Express. There are 6 different overclocking levels ranging from 2% (Private) to 10% (Commander), and the card was able to handle all of those settings, though not without problems. At the Commander setting, we experienced some image corruption after about 10 minutes of benchmarking.

We went back with Coolbits, but didn't have a whole lot of luck there either. Heat wasn't an issue since the GPU still didn't crack 53°C, which was the high point during testing at stock speeds. Overall, we only managed a 6% overclock which we'll take since MSI already pushes the hardware past NVIDIA's reference numbers.

Outside of the overclocking, the performed very well and it did not suffer from any stability problems at all. I'm currently using this video card in a 945G based SFF with a meager 260W PSU and the system is rock solid. We don't have a second card since that was sent to another reviewer here at VL (a HDCP one at that), but we'd imaging that two of these would make for a nice, and relatively cheap, SLI setup.

Performance was very good, especially if you consider the price point. The benchmark numbers may not look impressive, but those were real-world, with sound enabled in the games. We were also playing these at widescreen settings, with AA and AF turned on. I don't have a 6800 to compare against, but the card does perform more smoothly than the X800XL and 6600GT I've used previously. Now, there's no comparison really, but those cards were in this price range a year ago, so that's something to consider when you think of how far video cards have come.

Obviously, if you're interested in higher performance numbers, you're better off looking towards more expensive hardware. The is one of the better priced 7600GTs on the market and is readily available online of B&M (brick and mortar). Overclocking isn't the greatest to be honest, but since it's already clocked higher than many other 7600GTs, we won't ding the product too hard for that. If you're on the hunt for a good performing card for less than two hundred bucks, the MSI NX7600GT is worth a look.