Image quality

As expected the level of smoothness in the edges of renderings seemed excellent.  Both screen shots were taken within Half Life 2: The Lost Coast at 1600 x 1200 resolution.  The image below on the left is 0xFSAA and Trilinear filtering while the one of the right has the eye candy maxed out.  ATi and NVidia go about rendering in different ways but the end result (the picture) is the same.  All things considered, while the 7600 GST image quality at max is excellent; it does seem that the current ATi Radeon X1800 GTO does do a little bit of a better job.  We are talking little bit as in half a percent if that better and even that is a subjective gut call.

Overclocking

With the Inno3D 7600 GST's core already running 100MHz over the spec 7600 GS reference core speed of 400MHz, I wasn't holding my breath for any earth shattering gains.  The 1400MHz memory clock on the other hand seemed full of possibilities as it is the same memory and speed as on the 7600 GT cards found elsewhere.  Using the Coolbits registry entries, we unlocked the overclocking tab within the driver panel.  We reached our core and memory ceiling at 524MHz and 1508MHz respectively.  Not bad but nothing stellar either.  Rerunning a few of our gaming benchmarks in FRAPS, any differences if there were any, were imperceptible.

Conclusion

The Inno3D 7600 GST is a hard card to sum up.  From an emotional level, it's a feel good card offering the user very playable frame rates with the eye candy and associated features found in the GeForce 7x line.  It is also a nice thing to see a card be the size a card is supposed to be - not some nine inch wonder that will challenge your chassis.  Another plus is not needing an extra power connector plugged into your card since the Inno3D 7600 GST doesn't need one.  The only thumbs down issue of consequence was the cooling fan which ran a bit loud. 

However, the real issue here is performance.  Inno3D has done a fantastic job of blending the GeForce 7600 GS and 7600 GT.  The performance of their hybrid card, is every bit on par with what you would find on the 7600 GT... but therein lies the rub.  The price of the card is less than the GT but only marginally.  So marginally in fact that even though the Inno3D 7600 GST does a great job of holding its own, it would be hard not to suggest going with a full on 7600 GT instead.  The Inno3D GST is an easy card for us to recommend as it certainly gets the job done, but if it were priced in the $150 range, the card would be a home run for Inno3D.  Unfortunately, the current suggested pricing schedule dulls its luster.