A few days ago the nVidia 7600GS (which I am longing to replace with an 8800GTS) in my desktop just stopped working. Booting up would produce a corrupted display with lines and dots everywhere. Once it hit the Windows boot logo, it would reboot.

While I am waiting for a warranty replacement, I have been using an ultra-cheap 7100GS to fill its place. It can barely play any games, but it works fine for driving my 1680×1050 display and Media Center.

I previously had Aero enabled, and it looked just the same as it did on the 7600GS, but how would it hold up to a bit of pressure? I set 5 videos going, most HDTV rips and one VHS rip, and clicked the “switch between windows”. Surprisingly it worked quite well. Even with the 5 videos going, the frame rates on all the previews were quite smooth, with only a slight drop evident occasionally.

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