512Mb 7600GS usually had slow memory and there aren't a lot of cases to utilize it. Doom 3 on Ultra quality as one of the few examples.

Just make sure to buy one with GDDR3 memory, not DDR2. GeForce 7600GT with GDDR3 is very expensive, sellers know what they have.

AlexZ wrote on 2026-04-17, 16:31:

Just make sure to buy one with GDDR3 memory, not DDR2. GeForce 7600GT with GDDR3 is very expensive, sellers know what they have.

The eBay listing I found for the 7600 GT doesn't state on the page what RAM type it is, although it does include a screenshot of diagnostics software that states it has GDDR3... should I still trust it?

You probably mean https://www.ebay.de/itm/257439938285 . It displays too low GPU/memory clock though. Could be because NVidia driver isn't loaded. It would be best to find manufacturer and lookup real specs. It seems to be Gainward 7600 GT , there is another seller https://www.ebay.de/itm/257368232634 who sells the same thing.

All 7600GT were shipped with GDDR3. 7600GS were shipped with GDDR2 and occasionally with GDDR3 (rebranded downclocked GT).

Not true, I had a passive one like this https://www.ebay.de/itm/256718457352 . These have DDR2 and are slower.

AlexZ wrote on 2026-04-17, 16:50:

It would be best to find manufacturer and lookup real specs. It seems to be Gainward 7600 GT , there is another seller https://www.ebay.de/itm/257368232634 who sells the same thing.

I can't find the exact model, although it seems to be an XpertVision 7600 GT of some kind.
Though I have found another listing of what looks like the same card too at https://www.ebay.com/itm/257068124170, and it seems to corroborate the other card being GDDR3 and not DDR2?

Yes it looks good, you want that one.

I would say that if the gpu-z screenshot shows gddr3, then it is a pretty safe bet that is what it has.

Another option would be a 7800GS. Those should all have gddr3 and will be quite a bit faster as well.

There is also a Gainward 7800 card that was sold as a gs, but had the gt core.

cyclone3d wrote on 2026-04-17, 17:38:

I would say that if the gpu-z screenshot shows gddr3, then it is a pretty safe bet that is what it has.

Another option would be a 7800GS. Those should all have gddr3 and will be quite a bit faster as well.

There is also a Gainward 7800 card that was sold as a gs, but had the gt core.

GPU-Z has no clue about my Radeon 9600 having DDR2, so I'd never be too sure about it.

VanillaFairy wrote on 2026-04-17, 16:00:

in light of that, would a 7600 GT or GS be a better option for my system?

As a comparison, I have a 7600 GS, a 7300 GT, 6800 XT, and 6600 GT. On AGP system with Athlon 64 3200+ (s754, Venice core), the 7600 GS was the clear winner in most games, despite having only rather slow DDR2 (IIRC, 270MHz?? /540 DDR) memory. The 6800 XT and 6600 GT were both gDDR3 cards with really fast RAM (1 GHz DDR), but they still gave overall lower FPS... except in a few specific games only (Colin McRae Rally 04, IIRC.)

So I don't know if you'd find that much of a difference between the two on your system. Perhaps 10-15% difference in FPS, and that's a *best case* scenario probably. It might sound like a lot, but in reality any game that dips below 40 FPS on the GS card will probably not go much higher than mid 40's FPS on the GT card, if even that. It's not until you get faster than 60 FPS that you might see more noticeable results... but then when you get to that level, you've already reached the "good enough" threshold (60 FPS)... so would it even matter that much? Only if both cards are shooting out more than 80 FPS, then it might matter, as you could set the monitor refresh rate to either 60 Hz or 75 Hz and have V-sync turned on... in which case, the card doing 10% better will be less likely to run into situations where it dips below the monitor's V-synced refresh rate. But again, I expect this to be the most difference you will see between the two. In reality, it might be even less. I'm sure people will rebuff this with 3DMark scores, but I personally never cared about those. To me, the results that matter the most are the games I play. If there's no discernible difference in those, I don't bother any further.

That said, just buy whichever card is cheaper and/or easier to get... and most of all, whichever one has a better cooler. I know for a fact that quite a few of the 7600 cards came with really comical coolers. With the GeForce 7000 series being from the bumpgate era, it becomes rather important to pick the card with the better cooling. For decent life longevity, the cooler should keep the card below 60C at all times when under max load.
More heatsink surface area is usually the king... but not always (have seen a many badly designed coolers in the past.) However, a good design with lots of surface area should give the best cooling performance. For best results: passively-cooled card with a large, slow-turning fan attached will do wonders, both in terms of cooling performance, reliability, and noise levels.

if its £100+ i wouldnt bother, you wont see the benefit of a powerful gpu with a P4 2.8ghz, you're better off going with an fx5500, i have one of these 7600GT's an you would be better off pairing one with a core 2 duo.

ive got one and recently benchmarked it with a single core 775 celeron D 360 3.46ghz, it only scored 2000 points more than my fx5200 128mb 64bit. 🤣
the celeron D 360's performance falls slightly under the P4 extreme, so the gpu has pretty much hit its limit with a single core.
heres mine, i picked it up recently in a pc for £25, it had a bulging cap causing artifacts and lockups, i swapped the faulty cap for one i had lying round and it works gud! bet you cant tell which one 😀

heres the benchmarks

MB: MSI PM8PM-V
CPU: Celeron D 360 3.46ghz
RAM: 2GB DDR2

FX5200 128mb 64bit

7600GT 256mb 128bit

as you can see the performance increase of around 2000 is minimal considering how much more powerful the 7600gt should be over the fx5200.
i thought it either the cpu holding it back or that dodgy cap i swapped out is still causing power problems resulting in low performance.
i dont have a dual core for this board to rule out the gpu so i tested the celeron D in another board with a 7950GT.
heres the results.

MB: P4M900M2 (pci-e version of the board above)
CPU: Celeron D 360 3.46ghz
RAM: 2GB DDR2

7950GT 512mb 256bit

only 2000 points above the 7600GT which means the single core has hit its limit, and the 7600GT is working as it should.

now for the cpu comparison. the celeron D 360 3.46ghz is near on par with the P4 Extreme 3.73ghz so one of the top performing single cores Versus. the Celeron E3400 2.6ghz.
FYI the celeron E3400 is one of the lowest scoring 2.6ghz core 2 duos.

as you can see the 3dmark score has now near on doubled!

conclusion,
with a 478, P4 2.8ghz you wont see the full performance of the 7600GT so not really worth dropping £££ , if you are set on the 7600GT go with a core 2 duo to get the most out of it, if you plan on sticking with a 478 cpu go with an nvidia FX5xxx at a fraction of the price and near similar performance.

DudeFace wrote on 2026-04-18, 17:37:

if its £100+ i wouldnt bother, you wont see the benefit of a powerful gpu with a P4 2.8ghz, you're better off going with an fx55 […]
Show full quote

if its £100+ i wouldnt bother, you wont see the benefit of a powerful gpu with a P4 2.8ghz, you're better off going with an fx5500, i have one of these 7600GT's an you would be better off pairing one with a core 2 duo.

ive got one and recently benchmarked it with a single core 775 celeron D 360 3.46ghz, it only scored 2000 points more than my fx5200 128mb 64bit. 🤣
the celeron D 360's performance falls slightly under the P4 extreme, so the gpu has pretty much hit its limit with a single core.
heres mine, i picked it up recently in a pc for £25, it had a bulging cap causing artifacts and lockups, i swapped the faulty cap for one i had lying round and it works gud! bet you cant tell which one 😀

The attachment 20260418_164806.jpg is no longer available

heres the benchmarks

MB: MSI PM8PM-V
CPU: Celeron D 360 3.46ghz
RAM: 2GB DDR2

FX5200 128mb 64bit

The attachment 3dmark99 - Celeron D 360 3.46ghz - FX5200.jpg is no longer available

7600GT 256mb 128bit

The attachment 3dmark99 - Celeron D 360 3.46ghz - 7600GT.jpg is no longer available

as you can see the performance increase of around 2000 is minimal considering how much more powerful the 7600gt should be over the fx5200.
i thought it either the cpu holding it back or that dodgy cap i swapped out is still causing power problems resulting in low performance.
i dont have a dual core for this board to rule out the gpu so i tested the celeron D in another board with a 7950GT.
heres the results.

MB: P4M900M2 (pci-e version of the board above)
CPU: Celeron D 360 3.46ghz
RAM: 2GB DDR2

7950GT 512mb 256bit

The attachment 3dmark99 - Celeron D 360 3.46ghz - 7950GT.jpg is no longer available

only 2000 points above the 7600GT which means the single core has hit its limit, and the 7600GT is working as it should.

now for the cpu comparison. the celeron D 360 3.46ghz is near on par with the P4 Extreme 3.73ghz so one of the top performing single cores Versus. the Celeron E3400 2.6ghz.
FYI the celeron E3400 is one of the lowest scoring 2.6ghz core 2 duos.

The attachment 3dmark99 - Celeron E3400 2.6ghz - 7950GT.jpg is no longer available

as you can see the 3dmark score has now near on doubled!

conclusion,
with a 478, P4 2.8ghz you wont see the full performance of the 7600GT so not really worth dropping £££ , if you are set on the 7600GT go with a core 2 duo to get the most out of it, if you plan on sticking with a 478 cpu go with an nvidia FX5xxx at a fraction of the price and near similar performance.

Sempron (S754) @2.1Ghz + :

Graphics card............... 3dmark01 | 3dmark03 | Q3@480/Q3@768 | rtcw@480/rtcw@768
GeForce FX5200 ............. 6197.... | 1344.....| 274/159...... | 166/72
GeForce 7600GS (not even GT) 17440... | 8302.....| 293/291...... | 207/205

yeah, about the same performance... if all you're planning to do is play Solitaire on Windows 98, then yeah, you won't notice any difference...

to TS: Don't even consider the FX52/55—that piece of crap is useless. The 7600 is a much more powerful card on a P4 system. You won't see all the power at 2.8GHz? Probably. But the difference compared to the FX5500 will be dramatic.

3dmark 99 is an inadequate benchmark for 7600 GT. Adamsr did it right, 3dmark01 and 3dmark03 is needed. The difference will clearly show in higher resolution in games.

Since the P4 CPU isn't the fastest, you can also make a compromise with 7600GS which is a lot cheaper. If you swap the CPU for a fast Prescott 3.6-3.8Ghz then you can go with 7600 GT.

GeForce FX5200/5500 is only for PIII.

AlexZ wrote on 2026-04-18, 20:19:

Since the P4 CPU isn't the fastest, you can also make a compromise with 7600GS which is a lot cheaper. If you swap the CPU for a fast Prescott 3.6-3.8Ghz then you can go with 7600 GT.

I actually can't go for anything but Northwood, at least not without tracking down a different motherboard (at which point I'd probably go a Core 2 Duo motherboard for the way easier thermals & easier time tracking down a good cooler too)

the only retro motherboard I have right now is an ASUS P4S533 from an old computer my family had, and according to The Retro Web it can support only either Willamette or Northwood.
I could probably still try Prescott in it regardless, but I've no clue if it'd actually work. (I guess it wouldn't be particularly much more money, the P4 is still super cheap on eBay and I plan on assembling all of this during the summer when I'm not in uni)

I doubt Prescott will boot on that one. You can try to find 3066Mhz Northwood with 533 bus, but it probably isn't worth the money.

7600 GT GDDR3 > 7600 GT DDR2 > 7600 GS

In your case just get a 7600 GS.

DudeFace wrote on 2026-04-18, 17:37:

ive got one and recently benchmarked it with a single core 775 celeron D 360 3.46ghz, it only scored 2000 points more than my fx5200 128mb 64bit. 🤣
the celeron D 360's performance falls slightly under the P4 extreme, so the gpu has pretty much hit its limit with a single core.

now for the cpu comparison. the celeron D 360 3.46ghz is near on par with the P4 Extreme 3.73ghz so one of the top performing single cores Versus. the Celeron E3400 2.6ghz.

That, I think, is one of the most amazing and ridiculous/hilarious things I have ever read here on Vogons 🤣

^Reality check : They are not even close to have "similar performance".

Aside from that :
Old benchmarks like 99Max and 2k (and to some degree 01SE) all require solid memory subsystem performance, and VIA chipsets for 775 with AGP slot are one of the slowest chipsets available (not that there are many). You can check memory performance in AIDA64 or Everest Ultimate, and compare to other platforms (both bandwidth and latency matter for 100+ FPS scores).
Aside from that, 533 FSB get's trashed even more vs. 800 under those conditions since it caps max transfers from/to CPU... which Netburst architecture needs the most to actually get anywhere near it's peak performance.

Lastly, I don't own 5200 64-bit, but here's something similar (a PCX 5300) :

And 7600 GS AGP (with GT clocks you also have) :

I think it would have been great if someone else had that 2.8Ghz Northwood and 7600 GS / GT so that VanillaFairy can see what kind of performance they can expect.

He should just buy the cheaper one.
P4 Northwood 2.8GHz with 533 FSB and on SIS chipset is hardly a performance king, and unless there is upgrade path in future - there isn't much merit into getting GT now.
Sure, it will be faster than normal DDR2 based GS, however depending on details/resolution he wants to play at - it may simply not be visible in actual gameplay.

I'd even go as far as drop to 7300 GT or 6600 GT, if price difference between these two and 7600s is high enough (and you can get extra game compatibility from being able to use older drivers if you go GF6 instead GF7).