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Gigabyte 8600 GTS Silent Pipe 3 |
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Quiet Performance |
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by Josh Walrath |
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The 8600 GTS This top of the line midrange card does pack some nice features due to the G84 chip. The core runs at 675 MHz, with the stream processors running at 1.45 GHz. The memory clips along at a healthy 1 GHz giving 32 GB/sec of bandwidth. NVIDIA designed the board to be fairly energy efficient, and it apparently pulls less than 75 watts at full throttle. For the majority of 8600 GTS parts out there, NVIDIA recommends that the secondary PCI-E power adapter be used. NVIDIA designed this board to be as inexpensive to produce as possible, yet still achieve performance well above that of the older 7600 GT. Hence the 128 bit memory bus, the smaller and more efficient chip (requires less cooling and less power delivery circuitry), and reasonable amounts of memory for most applications. I would say that NVIDIA did design a very efficient architecture from both a chip and board perspective. Considering the competition with older DX9 cards, the sheen of DX10 support quickly fades away. For example, the X1950 Pro retails around the same price, but features more ROPS and texturing units, as well as a 256 bit memory bus. This advantage in bandwidth and fillrate does make the X1950 Pro a very attractive option when pitted against the 8600 GTS, especially in many current applications. The 8600 GTS does have several advantages though, and these are primarily power consumption, DX10 support, and being a new product that is relatively inexpensive to build as compared to the older X1950 Pro which will be EOL’d sometime late this summer and is more expensive to produce.
The first impressions of the content in the box are nothing special, but Supreme Commander bundled for free is a nice thing for nearly anyone. We have already seen the prices of the 8600 GTS erode quite a bit since its introduction, and basic boards can be had for around $179. This is quite a drop already from the MSRP of $239 for the high end boards. There are still a few boards hitting that lofty number, but for the most part the 8600 GTS is becoming very reasonable. The Gigabyte GV-NX86S256H I am not entirely sure why Gigabyte gives their products the names and numbers they do, but obviously there is a system there. NX86 refers to the chip and class (8600 GTS), the S refers to “Silent”, the 256 is the amount of memory, and I have no idea what the H stands for. Harmless? Howler? Horatio? Most likely High definition. Anyway, the entire name is a mouthful if one were to try to verbalize it. This card follows the stock clocks of the 8600 GTS to the letter. The core is at 675 MHz, the stream processors run at 1.45 GHz, and the memory is at 1 GHz. There are three major differences though. The card is a non-reference design, the cooler does not feature a fan, and the card itself does away with the external PCI-E power connector. Apparently the loss of the fan puts the wattage to a place where one is not needed. This means slightly less cable clutter in a case, and slightly less power usage as a whole. The cooler itself is a very interesting specimen. Gigabyte uses multiple tricks to improve the efficiency of a fanless cooler, and they are all put together in a rather nice package. Some people are turned off by the size of the cooler, as they do not want their midrange card to take up two slots. My own opinion is that the tradeoff is well worth it. For a cooler so massive, it really does not weigh all that much. It is heavier than the stock cooler, but it is lighter than most of the high end, copper based products that we see on both production boards and retail upgrades. The cooler uses multiple materials to achieve good cooling. A copper baseplate is in contact with the GPU die. Behind this baseplate are several copper heatpipes that transfer the heat to the cooling fins. Two separate aluminum based cooling fins are used. The primary one features a thick base which covers the copper baseplate and the heatpipes around the GPU. The fins on this are quite rough, so it increases the surface area as compared to a polished surface. This also introduces a small amount of turbulence, as laminar flow cannot occur on rough surfaces.
Taking off the manual and CD's, we see that the card is very well protected in its cutout. The box above it holds the rest of the accessories. The secondary aluminum portion sits on a copper baseplate as well, but it is the heatpipes which connect this part to the GPU. These are polished aluminum strips, but they are also stamped in the middle, and a portion of the fin is essentially extruded. This causes even more turbulence heading towards the airflow exit. These fins also extend beyond the card and into the open outside of the case. When all of these features are put together, we can see from a fluid dynamics standpoint that Gigabyte has done all they can to optimize heat transfer into an air environment. By utilizing conduction, convection, and the movement of air through a well ventilated case, the Silent Pipe 3 does a very good job even when a fan is not blowing directly onto the card. The card features dual dual-link DVI connectors and a video out which supports up to 1080p. The card again is passively cooled and does not need an external power connector to run. The non-reference design also features all solid caps, as compared to the standard electrolytic ones most other 8600 GTS use. Theoretically these should extend the lifetime of the product as well as pump less heat into the system. Gigabyte typically tries to flesh out their bundles, and they did a nice job on this one. The box contains a manual, driver CD, 2 x DVI to VGA adapters, an S-Video/ Component breakout box, a 4 pin molex to 6 pin PCI-E power adapter, and a full version of Supreme Commander. Two things stand out here. Supreme Commander is a brand new game which will push most video cards to their limit and costs between $40 and $49 at retail. The other is why Gigabyte felt they needed to include a PCI-E power adapter when the card does not need one. Strange, yet odd. The card comes with a 3 year warranty, which is not as nice as the lifetime warranties the three North American vendors have. Still, when we consider upgrade paths, it is likely that the original buyer will have upgraded to something else before the warranty expires.
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