ok first, yes the 7600gs "should work" but with nvidia theres alwase the chance it wont work at all or will even hurt perf if the cards dont get along well.
dont be a fanboi or nvidia over ati, i use to HATE ati, hard core hate, due to the early 2k drivers sucking and them never fixing it.
since then i have owned bouth brands, and one thing has been consistant, if you buy a good ati chip card the perfs better and the image quility is ALOT better, also less driver issues accure.
little feture comparison for you to give you some facts b4 you make your dessition.
video playback acceleration:
nVidia has PureVideo, it dosnt work worth a damn, im a tech, its what i do for a living, and guess what, i have spend HOURS of my life trying to get purevideo working properly, it never works fully, and sometimes it works then just dissapears/stops working for no reasion.
Ati/amd have Avivo, it works for playback, accelerating many kinds of video using the GPU to decode and playback these formats taking the load off ur cpu and improving quility as well.
3d fetures each company has in this range.
Nvidia has ps3 support, but it only allows you to use eather pf16 hdr OR AA not bouth, none of the 6/7 series cards can do hdr+aa in farcry or oblivion or the bulk of newer games.
they do have flat texture AA and it works pretty well but the perf inpact is quite evedant this is expecly true on the lower end cards even in SLI.
Ati has ps3 support,can do fp16 hdr+aa combine, making games look far better, this is a kool feture specly for games like farcry where HDR makes it look that much cooler.
ati/amd also have AAA their form of flat texture AA(smoothes edges of things like fences and tree leifs,exct) the perf impact is there, but less then nvidias method.
Now heres a big one for looking aheady 6 months(more or less) Ati cards can be used as a PPU, phsyics prosessing unit, like the agiea ppu card, but FAR more powerfull, so when your x1900gt/1950gt/1950pro(or even lower x1300xt+ card) gets replaced u can put it in a 2nd pci-e slot and use it as a PPU in modern games making them that much more real.
nvidia dosnt offer this, and from what i have read they dont plan to, their cards below the 8800 seirse dont have the programable shader power to make a good ppu.
also theres stirings about amd opening at least the linux driver sorce code, intresting because it could lead to FAR better ogl drivers!!!
now one other HUGE advantege of the ati cards is also that ati/amd have put out a software programing kit so that companys can program their software to run on the GPU, this means that you will see stuff like video/audio recoding/encoding software that runs fully on the gpu and at a MUCH higher rate of speed then it could on a normal cpu(even the x1300/pro cards would encode faster then a quadcore intel cpu) ati/amd videocards can already run folding@home if you download the GPU client, NV cards CANT they dont offer enought shader power or performance even in sli to do it efficently, even the 8800 cant be used for that because of driver flaws.
there are ALOT of projects out there that are working to take advantege of the excess power the ati cards have, i know the VLC people would like to eventualy make a version that can use the videocard to decode insted of the cpu(huge perf boost)
nvidia is having issues with driver support lately, specly with vista, its quite disscouraging to techs like me who have clients who have nvidia cards and are mad about issues that havent been fixed in over 6 months, one of my clients has quad sli, he now KNOWS it will never see a good driver because nvidia has dumped support with the g80 line of cards....so hes stuck with 2 gx2 cards that acctualy work worse then 1 gx2 card alone or the x1900xt they replaced...(told him to ebay them whal they are still bringing good$)
my advice as above is to look at the x1900/1950 cards, even if you dont really like ati, give them a chance, if your not happy im SURE you could sell the card and get a good nvidia card with what you make back.
and a little info from my personal system (very simlar to yours)
the 7900gtx and gx2 are acctualy SLOWER then my x1900xt/xtx(512mb+vf900 cooler@700/1550) and image quility in games and videoplayback is worse, i know this because i tested a friends gtx and gx2 cards for 3 days each when he thought they where bugged(turned out it was his psu had a bad cap that was putting out unclean volts) to be sure they where better then what i had owned from nvidia last time(6800gt) but they where a far cry(hehe) from what im use to with my ati cards, my x800xt pe kicks them around in image quility if not perf.
as i have said b4, when r600 comes out i will start seirously looking at who has the better designs ati/amd or nv, if nvidia is better by the 2nd or 3rd gen of dx10 cards i will probbly go that way when i deside my x1900xtx is to slow, but that assumes nvidia fixes their driver issues with vista......they have had 6-9 months to make vista drivers, and the WHQL vista drivers they put up on their site are gone/taken down now(read news section)
its quite destressing, they rush out card after card, trying to beat the compotition to the mark, this is why im very septical about nvidia these days, i dont truely hate them, i just lost faith and trust in them as a company, ati dosnt rush out cards in my exp, sure some cards turn up with problems(mostly due to cheaper parts being used or companys skimping on cooling) but they dont force out hardware befor its ready for prime.
i honestly hope we see nvidia pickup the ball and run with it, so we can have some real compotition insted of early out laim ducks(g80 drivers suck) and delayed products(r600)
sorry for such a long post, i will go a bit longer tho
i have owned
nvidia:
riva128
tnt1
tnt2
gf1sdr
gf2gts
gf3ti500
gf4mx 440/4000/wtfe
gf4 ti4400@4800
fx5800ultra(dustbuster from hell, it was loud and worthless in dx9 games)
gf 6800gt@ultra
Ati,
mach 32
mach 64
rage
rage pro
rage pro turbo
rage128(worst win2k drivers ever made)
radeon 9600 non pro 256mb
radeon 8500(temp card after i sold a buddy the 9600 and ordered next card)
radeon 9800se 256bit(hardmoded to pro@xt clocks)
radeon x800pro vivo flashed to xt pe
radeon x1900xtx
i have owned multi of most of the nvidia cards, and was quite happy with the 4400 and lower, but since the 5800ultra mess i have given nvidia a couple chances, and they have failed to be as good as let alone beat ati.
the 9600 card was gotten to replace the 5800ultra, it was 1/4 the price and was over 10x as fast in dx9 beta games i was testing, full games it was 10x as fast at munimum most times FAR FAR more then 10x as fast
and the image quility was STUNNING.
the only reasion it tryed a 9600 was a buddy INSISTED i try his old one(he replaced it with a better card when he got a settlement from a court case) i didnt want to, i HATED ati i was the biggiest nvidia fanboi you ever saw, but he insisted and loand it to me, after a week of testing i was hooked, not to mention when checking on driver support i found that ati had started putting out very regular and fast updates, if you reported a bug they would send you a link to a driver update to fix it or info on tweaking the reg to try and work it out.
so after about a month using his card a linux/unix nut i know wanted my 5800ultra and offered more then i had spent on it, i said HELL YEAH, and went that same day and got a 9600 256mb card, when i got home i found ati had put out a new driver that boosted perf without hurting quility at all, after like a year a buddy of mine who had the 8500le wanted dx9 support for a game he just got that ran dx7 and 8 cards in the same mode and dx9 cards in a FAR better mode(diffrance was like dx7 hl2 vs dx9 hl2) so i sold him my card and ordered a 9800se 256bit from powercolor and softmoded it and soft overclocked it to xt specs, it worked flawless, so i flashed it and did the hard mode(pretty easy really), the same guy wanted the 9800 around the time the x800 came out, i was also selling a system to a friend around the same time.
so i went for the 6800gt, i had nothing but driver based problems with it, 2 months later the x800pro vivo was hard to get and the x800xt pe was never in stock(unless it was one of the 600+$ versions.) so i went for an asus x800pro vivo that had a 100% unlock rate, and my linux nut buddy again offered me more then i spent on the card, mainly because i laped the sink and used good goop and such on the card, also added a small crossflow fan to cool the voltege regs on the pcb.
the above mentioned driver issues where 3 main things, 5 second studder, this hits a % of the population for a reasion nvidia hasnt figuared out and probbly never will bother to, it causes a pause/studder every 5-15sec when gaming depending on the system, theres no known 100% working fix, some systems u can dissable fastwrites and sideband addressing and it fixes it others it never gos away.
2nd probem was aa/af falloff in games neer center of image, the closer u get to center of your screen the less aa/af you get, it was fixable by setting driver LOD down a few notches, but this makes the whole game look worse....its how nvidia fixed it with later drivers, making this lower setting default and renaming it 0.
3rd was the fact that the image quility was never as good as my 9800 had been, even after many driver updates.
i got the x800pro vivo,flashed to x800xt pe bios, and it worked FLAWLESS, even with fastwrites enabled it didnt have problems!!!!
the image quilit was back, no studder, and i got better fps in every game i had even with aa/af cranked up.
since then i have worked on MANY systems with bouth brands of card, some on bouth sides had issues, mostly due to cheap makers using poor cooling or cheaper componants on their cards.
you can avoid this by buying a good brand and avoiding lower end models known to have issues.
the one thing i have seen about drivers has been that ati windows drivers have consistantly been better in QUILITY if not perf then nvidias in recent years, less weird little niggling probblems, like texture cruptions in games that seems to be random.
also if you report a problem to amd/ati you get a responce, nvidia you get ignored most times
well its all up to you, but i do feel your jipping your self if you dont give ati a chance.
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