The GeForce 7600 GS is NVIDIA’s latest addition to the 7 series — a trimmed-down version of the 7600 GT. It has slower memory and a core clock of 400MHz, but still packs a punch.

It’s also passively cooled as standard, which will please those wanting a relatively beefy but silent card for a media centre PC. It’s also a reasonable choice for gaming, and at this price it could do a great deal of damage to NVIDIA’s own 7300 series, as well as several others.

Naturally, performance can’t match the GT, but our tests showed it can hold its own in the latest games against the old 6800. Also, it’s a cut above the 6600 GT. Some games should be playable at 1280 x 1024, but you may have to switch down to 1024 x 768 for others.

A bonus is that this is one of the cheapest SLI compatible NVIDIA cards, beaten only by the 6600 GT, so there’s the potential for better performance. And the ability to play back high-definition 1080p video (page 83) makes it an even more obvious choice for media centres. And just to complete matters, features such as dual-link DVI (for high-resolution displays) are yet more reasons to consider the 7600 GS.