BIOS: Technology Means Business

nVidia has expanded its GeForce 7 Series product line for the mainstream market segment with two competitively positioned graphics processing units (GPUs).

Available immediately from leading retail and e-tail outlets worldwide the GeForce 7600 GS (£115/$199) is an SLI-ready GPU which delivers high-definition (HD) gaming and home-theatre quality HD video with silent operation.

The GeForce 7300 LE (£63/$99) was previously available only to system builders and boasts the video and gaming features of today’s most advanced GPUs to deliver HD video up to 1080i resolution and ultra-realistic gaming effects at mainstream price points without compromising performance. However, it doesn’t support SLI.

Within the 7300 GS lies a mere 64-bit memory interface, however, compared to the 256-bit memory interface used by the high-end 7800. The card does include nVidia’s TurboCache technology, which can use available system DRAM for graphics processing.

On paper, the vertex fill rate of the 7300 GS is just 413 million vertices, compared to 1.1 billion for the 7800; the 7300 GS’s pixel fill rate is 2.2 billion pixels/s, versus 13.2 billion pixels/s for the 7800. Finally, the 7300 GS’ memory bandwidth is 6.5GB/s per second, compared to 54.4GB/s for the 7800.

‘nVidia GPUs have long been praised in the enthusiast community and by gamers for excellent 3D performance and exceptional HD video playback,’ said Ujesh Desai, general manager of desktop GPUs at nVidia. ‘The same characteristics that make so many gamers select nVidia GPUs will greatly benefit mainstream customers when Microsoft Windows Vista arrives - and these new GPUs deliver the same enthusiast - class features at very affordable prices.’

‘Our sales data indicates that the GeForce 7 Series graphics architecture is preferred by our customers, and GeForce 7600 GS fills in the only remaining hole in the incredibly-strong GeForce 7 product line-up from nVidia,’ said Howard Tong, vice president at Newegg.com. ‘The price band of $129 to $149 is immensely popular among our customers, so a product based on the highly-regarded GeForce 7 Series architecture in this price range is sure to be in very high demand.’

The new GPUs deliver H.264 hardware accelerated support through nVidia’s PureVideo technology, and are the industry’s only GPU architecture with full support for Microsoft DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 3.0 - including vertex texture fetch (VTF) -enabling advanced shading programs for more realistic effects, says nVidia.

Some of the world’s leading add-in card partners are offering graphics cards based on the new nVidia GeForce 7 Series GPUs, including Albatron, AOpen, ASUSTek, BFG Technologies, Biostar, Chaintech, Cheer Ascent, City Gate/Triple-D, Club3D, ELSA, Epsco, EVGA, Gainward, Galaxy, Gigabyte Technology, Innovision, Jaton, Jetway, Leadtek Research, MSI Computer, Palit Microsystems, Prolink, PNY Technology, Point of View, Sigmacom, SPARKLE and XFX.

[Best Graphics Card Pricing UK]
[Best Graphics Card Pricing US]

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