Gigabyte GeForce 8600GTS
NVIDIA GeForce 8600GTS, 256 MB GDDR3Core / Shader Clock : 675 / 1458 MHz
Memory Clock : 504 MHz (1008 MHz GDDR3)
Overall Score: 87.5 points
The word 'industrial strength' comes to our mind when we looked at this card for the first time. It certainly mean looking enough, but look closer and you'll see how much effort Gigabyte have put into this card. Like many silent, passively cooled graphics cards, the Silent Pipe 3 cooler on the Gigabyte NX8600GTS is a dual slot cooling solution. This means it has more heat dissipation area than your average single slot coolers, a necessity because there is no fan. Although the biggest part of the cooler is the one that draws most attention, its actually the second part that's interesting. On the image above, you can see the aluminum fins actually stick out to the back of your case. That means the heatsink uses both air inside and outside the case.
if there's is a downside to this design, it's likely the lack of any contact with the memory chips. However, this might not be a disadvantage as we originally think. Because the heatsink is passively cooled, it's very likely be very warm, even hot - hotter than the memory chips themselves. So, instead of taking heat away from the memory chips, it will likely transfer heat from the core to the chip.
You might be wondering how Gigabyte manage to fit such a large heatsink on this card. Well, if you look closer, you'll notice this card uses a different board layout than the reference based cards. It does not feature the standard 6 pin ATX power connector. Though this is a plus for some people, this is likely why the card have a much lower overclocking 'ceiling' than reference based cards.
Now, just to clarify things, Gigabyte actually has three flavors of GeForce 8600GTS. One is based on the reference design, the one we're testing here and also another one, using the same heatsink, but clocked higher - their TurboForce line. Unfortunately, we weren't able to test that card. So, this card runs on standard clocks. The bundle on both offering is actually the same. You'll find the usual standard accesories - a DVI-to-analog dongle, an HDTV dongle / cable. No 6 pin ATX converters, but that's OK since you don't need it anyway. You'll also find a driver CD, complete with Gigabyte's usual utility - V-Tuner - to overclock the card and a full version of Supreme Commander. This bundle alone distinguish itself from ASUS EN8600GTS Silent.
Now, let see how good Silent Pipe 3 is. Below is a snapshot of RivaTuner's hardware monitoring applet showing test results without a fan.
63° Celsius at full load. Now to put things on perspective, that's about the same as the ASUS EN8600GTS did with a fan. Unfortunately, due to the use of a different board design, RivaTuner is unable to measure ambient temperature. However, it's pretty likely the ambient temperature is lower too. Next, we'll see how a little bit of air can do.
We're down to 50° Celsius or basically 13° Celsius lower. We say the Silent Pipe 3 does it job very well. So, if you're in the market for a passively cooled, mainstream stream card and doesn't mind the dual slot cooling, you should definitely check out this card (or the factory overclocked version). With more in term of bundle and thermal performance, it's easy to recommend this card for those who want a silent rig.
[Previous Page]
[Go to top]
[Next Page]