Leading graphics chip supplier Nvidia Corp. on Wednesday indirectly confirmed existence of plans to release at least one GeForce 7600-series graphics card for previous-generation systems with accelerated graphics port (AGP) bus. This confirms earlier reports about Nvidia’s intention to allow users of inexpensive or old computers to get modern graphics technology.
Among the other supported products, Nvidia’s ForceWare 91.28 drivers support GeForce 7600 GS graphics cards for AGP bus, a product, which the company has not yet announced. The GeForce 7600 GS product by Nvidia serves $120 – $150 per graphics card market segment and provides mainstream-class performance. Earlier it was reported that Nvidia’s partners were going to release AGP flavours of the GeForce 7600 GT and 7900 GT-based graphics cards, but Nvidia has never confirmed such a plan.
GeForce 7600 GS graphics processor has 12 pixel shader units, 5 vertex shader units, is clocked at 400MHz and comes with 256MB of 128-bit 800MHz GDDR3 memory. Specifications of the model 7600 GS for AGP 8x are unclear.
Nowadays virtually all graphics processors are made for PCI Express bus, which is present in the vast majority of the new computers on the market. As a result of that, makers of graphics cards have to use special bridges that allow PCI Express graphics processing units (GPUs) to communicate with the AGP bus. Every additional chip costs additional money and add complexity to graphics boards, which means that AGP flavours of graphics cards cost slightly more compared to similarly configured PCI Express products.
In addition to the GeForce 7600 GS for AGP, the new beta ForceWare drivers support some other unannounced products, such as the GeForce 7500 LE for PCI Express, GeForce 6800 XT/XE/LE for AGP and PCI Express as well as GeForce 7800 GS for PCI Express.
