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Graphics Software

A Fanless Graphics Card from ASUS 238

Posted by CmdrTaco from the but-i-need-fans-to-feel-complete dept.
mikemuch writes "ASUS has come out with the Extreme N6600GT Silencer/HTD, a GeForce 6600GT without any cooling fan. It's sort of odd looking, with heat sinks that fold on a hinge. Great for home theater since it's silent. Loyd Case of ExtremeTech has put it through a rigorous bunch of benchmarks."
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A Fanless Graphics Card from ASUS More

A Fanless Graphics Card from ASUS

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  • Fanless (Score:4, Funny)

    by mysqlrocks ( 783488 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @02:32PM (#13678901) Homepage Journal
    A Fanless Graphics Card

    Did anybody else read this as a graphics card that nobody likes?

    • Re:Fanless (Score:3, Funny)

      by Tatarize ( 682683 )
      Did anybody else read this as a graphics card that nobody likes?

      YES! You noticed it was from ASUS too?

      • Re:Fanless (Score:3, Informative)

        by $RANDOMLUSER ( 804576 )
        If you were talking about their motherboards, I'd agree; but I've found that their graphics cards tend to be pretty standard Nvidia reference cards. I tend to buy last years "top-of-the-line" cards, and I've owned a few of theirs without any problems.

        • Re:Fanless (Score:3, Informative)

          by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) *
          What's so bad about ASUS boards? I've usually found them to be pretty reliable, and currently recommend the A8N-[E/SLI] boards to people. Is there something wrong I should know about?

          Then again, I usually wait for the early adopters to help companies work out the bugs before making a purchase. I've heard from several people that the ASUS boards can be buggy, but they always seem to be fine by the time I get to them.

          • Re:Fanless (Score:3, Interesting)

            by PhotoBoy ( 684898 )
            Seconded, I've had motherboards from Gigabyte, Abit, Shuttle and Epox (and Asus of course) and I've always found the Asus boards to be excellent, both stable and with lots of excellent features.

            Compared to the piece of shit Shuttle SN25P I recently had that kept destroying my RAID array I would certainly be interested to hear what the grandparent doesn't like about Asus motherboards.

            • Re:Fanless (Score:2, Interesting)

              by WraithRealm ( 915444 )
              I myself will never again recommend ASUS boards to any of my customers. Not only are they prone to small failures like being unable to read the CPU fan speed to crashing onboard components, but with the exception of one board (which I later found out *had* broken - it just wasn't important enough to count) almost every ASUS board I've used in both my machines and a co-worker's machines have intermitent "connection" problem with the Southbridge. I don't know how many times I got called out to figure out what

          • Re:Fanless (Score:3, Interesting)

            by theantipop ( 803016 )
            There are some issues if you are trying to build a top-of-the-line system with the Asus boards. I own an A8N-E and with fast timed Corsair ram the board won't play nice. I would put the problem on Corsair (since they used to lie about their timings) but others have reported problems with other brands as well. I don't mean to say they make horrible products, I have been pretty happy with mine, but they have lost their outstanding reputation among enthusiasts which they had held for a long time.
    • When did Graphics cards start needing fans to the point where one WIHTOUT a fan is news?

      The graphics card in my PC, Linux Laptop and Work Laptop are all devoid of fans. There's the case fans, the CPU fans but that's it.

      Has it really been that long since I upgraded my PC? Funny how not buying new games all the time reduces my desire to upgrade my computer.

      I remember attaching the CPU fan from an old Pentium to my ATI card a while back just for the fun of it, but I didn't leave it there.

      What gives? What am
      • Playing games made this millenium?

        I buy about 1 game a year, but my last 4 or 5 video cards, stretching back to that old Kyro VR, have had fans.
        • Playing games made this millenium?

          Hmmm, let's see.

          Nerthack.

          Freedom Force.

          X-Com

          Quake II and Quake III

          Half Life

          Civ III

          Sim City 3000 Unlimited

          Frozen Bubble.

          Serious Sam

          Diablo II

          I tried Doom 3, and while it ran just fine, the gameplay left me cold. It just wasn't as fun as the games listed above.
          • Nerthack.

            Have you played the Mac version call "iNertHack".
      • Try something more intense, like a mmorpg. If my fan isn't running during EQ2 or FFXI, the graphics card overheats and shuts down the PC.

  • 8 out of 10 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by geomon ( 78680 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @02:33PM (#13678915) Homepage Journal
    I guess the utility of this card is based on how demanding your game is. Looks like it gets "hammered" quite a bit by the GeForce card.

    Silence can be expensive.

    • Re:8 out of 10 (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Stuart Gibson ( 544632 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @02:37PM (#13678945) Homepage
      I run a fanless Gigabyte X800XL that has no issue with the current games. Sure it isn't 1600x1200 with maximum AA and AF, but an easy 1280x1024 with sensible AA and AF (and eye candy on full) with the current benchmark games (HL2, Far Cry etc).

      Doesn't seem like this is something that new, I've had my card for a few months now.

      Stuart

      • Re:8 out of 10 (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Total_Wimp ( 564548 )
        The article actually mentions other fanless solutions. It point out that the thing making this card unique is the swiveling heat sink/pipe that takes advantage of the airflow from your CPU cooler.

        I think the twisting alone buys it a mention, but I think it could be made better. What we really want is for the thing to twist automatically with a loud WHIRRRR and then click into place with a satisfying Ker-Chunck. And it should do this only when it starts to heat up, like right after you start your game.
    • You see, only one of computers I own and/or manage has a fan on its graphics card, and it's currently sitting headless in a closet. In fact, playing new mindless games is the only thing you need a powerful graphics card for.

      I enjoy NetHack, MUDs, and if I feel like playing a graphical game, it's something which is playable. Master of Orion 2 is my favourite; it's still better than anything produced in recent years.
      • "playing new mindless games"

        Well, that's rather a subjective comment isn't it?
        Instead of NetHack you could play Fate - which is much like a pretty graphical version of NetHack. For strategy there are plenty of upcoming games (i.e. Age of Empires 3, Civ 4, Rise of Legends) using snazzy 3D effects.
        I used to play MUDs - now I play MMOs. Both I think have their merits.
        You may want to play MOO 2 for the rest of your life, but I prefer some variety.
        And is there something inherently wrong about a good shooter like

  • Um... but (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Allen Zadr ( 767458 ) * <Allen.ZadrNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday September 29, 2005 @02:35PM (#13678935) Journal
    It seems to depend on a CPU fan. Hardly "silent". Your just eliminating one fan from a multi-fan system. How would it work on a fanless CPU setup?

    Somehow I'm thinking fried silica.

    • It seems to depend on a CPU fan. Hardly "silent". Your just eliminating one fan from a multi-fan system. How would it work on a fanless CPU setup?

      Simple: It wouldn't. That's okay, though, you'd just pick a different solution to the problem. Just because it doesn't allow you to go fanless doesn't mean that eliminating the one fan wouldn't lessen the noise coming from the system. If I'm building a quiet rig and my options were this and a CPU fan or having a card with a fan and a CPU fan, I'd take this.

    • Re:Um... but (Score:3, Informative)

      by Smidge204 ( 605297 )
      The way I read it, the radiator is large enough to safely handle the load without any forced convection.

      However, they mounted the heat pipe and radiator on a hinge so that, if you have a CPU fan, you can get an added benefit without adding another fan.

      Failing that, you can rotate it to avoid other things in the case and get optimal orientation for natural convection/other drafts.
      =Smidge=
    • what if.. AMD does come out with a fanelss cpu where a big heat sink would stick out toward the video card's fan.
      • Opteron EE will be a good candidate.. 1.4Ghz tops out at 30W

    • As others mentioned, this isn't intended for a case with zero airflow. But the benefit is clear: rather than cooling the video card with a fast, whiny 40mm or 60mm fan, you can take advantage of the existing case airflow from one or two slow, quiet 120mm fans. Since the case should already have some good airflow anyway (passive video cooler or not), this is a net win. :-) -- Paul

    • Wrong. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by imsabbel ( 611519 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @04:52PM (#13680191)
      It doesnt eleminate _a_ fan in a multifan enviroment, it eleminates the smallerst, highest RPM, loudest and easieast to clog up with dirt and fail fan in a multifan enviroment.

      10 12cm case fans running at 7V dont come close to some of those 8000rpm 40mm fuckers
    • It seems to depend on a CPU fan. Hardly "silent". Your just eliminating one fan from a multi-fan system. How would it work on a fanless CPU setup?

      I have a fanless XFX card with the GF6600, and it doesn't use any tricks to exploit other fans in the system. It runs a tad warm, but within the spec'd range - Around 55C idle, up to around 70C under heavy use.

      Personally, I like keeping everything as cool as possible, so "modded" my case to have a low-RPM 120mm fam blow nice cool air on it, which drops it by

  • Overkill (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Radres ( 776901 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @02:36PM (#13678937)
    Great for home theater since it's silent.

    Or you can just buy a cheap old 2D card with no 3D acceleration since all you are doing is rendering video!

    • Re:Overkill (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Tha_Big_Guy23 ( 603419 )
      Or you can just buy a cheap old 2D card with no 3D acceleration since all you are doing is rendering video!

      Well, the problem with that solution is that the older 2D cards aren't fast enough to display the full screen rendering of high definition video. Granted, all we're doing is 2D, but at the point at which it's put into a home theater setup, the video card is taking most of the grunt work of decoding the video from the processor. At least, that was how I thought it was working these days.

      • Re:Overkill (Score:3, Informative)

        by Jeffrey Baker ( 6191 )
        Eh? A Matrox Millienium was perfectly able to scale and convert the colorspace of 1920x1080 video. That card had no fan and came out 8 years ago (at least).

    • Re:Overkill (Score:4, Funny)

      by Tiger4 ( 840741 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @02:40PM (#13678992)
      No dammit! Not good enough. I must have the fastest 30fps video rendering available!!

    • Re:Overkill (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Yeah, but the second I buy an old 2D rendering card a newer 2D rendering card will come on the market and mine will be obsolete.

    • Re:Overkill (Score:4, Interesting)

      by fyrie ( 604735 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @02:51PM (#13679102)
      No offense, but you are obviously not in the know of what it takes to run a HTPC. Upscailing DVD to HD with an upscaling such as ffdshow is extremely GPU intensive. I am running a 6600gt and it BARELY makes the cut for 1280 720p. I have read that a 6600 won't do 1080i, but a 6800 will.

      • Re:Overkill (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Jeffrey Baker ( 6191 )
        That must be some ass-bad programming, because I just tried scaling a DVD to full screen on a 2048x1536 display, and it worked perfectly well on a Rage 128, a Matrox Millenium II, and a Matrox G400, all of which are at least 4 years out of production. The r128 is in a machine with a 400MHz PowerPC, too. So if you are having trouble getting 720p output from modern hardware, your software is to blame.
      • No.

        I watched DVD video scaled to 1024x768 on 600Mhz PCs with low-end 3D PCI cards years ago. If your system is having trouble doing that, you probably have a slow DVD drive or some other bottleneck. I currently do this on my 900Mhz HTPC with an old ATI Radeon 9200 that I bought for $50. It doesn't have a fan either, just a heat sink.
      • I've been doing full-screen DVD since I got my first DVD drive in 1997. Back then, you needed a hardware decoder card for the MPEG2 stream if you didn't have a decent processor, but displaying 30fps 1280x1024 video hasn't been an issue for a long long time. It may be that your GeForce card is supporting some stream decoding operations (at least a couple of my cards boasted "MPEG2 decoder!" on the box), but you don't need a top-end card for the fill rate.

    • Re:Overkill (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Or you can just buy a cheap old 2D card with no 3D acceleration since all you are doing is rendering video!

      So you've got this P4 class machine hooked up to a 60" hdtv screen with surround sound ... you and/or your kids aren't going to be mighty tempted to pop in a game or two?

      Sorry. I don't buy that.
      • If you can afford HDTV, then $250 for a video card is probably not going to break the bank for you. If you're just recording SDTV, you can get away with a much cheaper solution.
    • My:

      01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 8x] (rev a4)

      which has 3D accelleration and so on does not have any fan... And this is far too decent to just play movies. This post (meaning parent /. post not yours, mind you ;) is plain stupid. You do not need modern GFX card to play movies. :) Card from '98 will perfectly do the job. :)

  • *Now* they make one (Score:4, Interesting)

    by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <`akaimbatman' `at' `gmail.com'> on Thursday September 29, 2005 @02:37PM (#13678946) Homepage Journal
    But sometimes, you just want a little silence. For example, if you're building a home-theater PC, you'll want as quiet a system as possible.

    Well, that would have been nice to be able to recommend when I wrote this article [blogspot.com]. I had also recommended an Asus GeForce 6600, albeit one that didn't cost quite as much. For myself (not being an audiophile), the cheaper card works fine as it rarely spins up to any noticable volume while I'm watching TV. I can understand, though, that for others the background noise can be very annoying.

    As you can see, the card is actually designed to take advantage of a preexisting CPU cooling fan to blow air over the passive radiator. If you have a standard active cooling mount, then this is an innovative idea. But it does limit your choice of CPU coolers. For one thing, your processor heat sink can't be taller than the bottom of the card.

    So what they're saying is that the ASUS Star Ice Jet Engine^W^W CPU Fan isn't going to work [viperlair.com] with this card? What a shocker. ;-)

    (No, I won't let go of it. I've still got mine sitting on my desk, just so I can get all the "What the hell is that?" comments. )

    Nvidia's upcoming Release 80 drivers include a number of enhancements for HDTV, including the ability to minimize overscan problems, something which has plagued home-theater PCs for years.

    This reminds me, has anyone had any experience with this [pccasegear.com] or any other HDTV-compatible cards that don't cost an arm and a leg? I'm still avoiding HD for now, but it's likely to catch eventually. To date I haven't seen too many inexpensive HDTV tuner cards. Then again, maybe I'm not looking hard enough?
    • I read your post last week, and let me tell ya, it got my gears turning!

      I wanted to use the setup as a gaming system in addition to handling all my home theatre needs, but one question remained. Isn't there some length threshold for the DVI cable beyond which the picture starts to degrade? Perhaps that only is an issue with current analog cables, but I was wondering what you would do if you kept the PC fairly far away from the TV.

      Otherwise, an inspiring article. I'd also be interested to hear your though
      • Isn't there some length threshold for the DVI cable beyond which the picture starts to degrade?

        DVI is digital, so you either have a signal lock or you don't. Which is to say, that the cable is still going to experience the same problems as any other cable, it's just that you're going to simply lose the signal instead of experiencing degradation. This link [scala.com] should help you pick a cable that meets your needs. Be warned, though, 10 meters is probably about the most you'll manage to get.

        Otherwise, an inspiring

  • Not new (Score:5, Informative)

    by mqRakkis ( 521550 ) <{moc.liamg} {ta} {nenimrunr}> on Thursday September 29, 2005 @02:38PM (#13678968) Homepage
    Gigabyte has been selling a fanless 6600GT for a while now, the GV-NX66T256D [giga-byte.com].

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Yes, and it's a great card, with a much less weird looking and probably more practical cooler.
    • I have one. Great card, hasn't missed a beat in the 5 months or so that I've owned it. Not only is it fanless, it's "overclocked" by some amount straight from the factory (maybe 5-10%)... It's also a VIVO card, meaning it can capture digital video (which interestingly enough was a standard feature of the 6600, which hardly anyone bothered to implement).

  • Useless (Score:3, Informative)

    by Snoolas ( 910809 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @02:39PM (#13678974)
    I have a 6600GT with a fan, and it isn't loud at all. Just put up with it. You'll never notice the sound difference unless you don't have any other fans in your computer. If you don't have any fans in your computer, you're fried. Water cooling units make noise, unless you have a Zalman reserator. Let the enthusiasts have their fun...

    • Re:Useless (Score:3, Informative)

      by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) *
      Personally, I agree with you. But for some people, the fan noise is REALLY bothersome. Especially those who have tuned their ears to hear with precision. (i.e. The audiophile.)

      That being said, I think the problem tends to be exasperated by poor cases. One of the primary points you have to look for when chosing a case is "does air flow well?" The case should be roomy enough to allow air to flow smoothly from the front of the case to the rear. Usually you'll have a fan in the rear of the case, but having moun

    • Re:Useless (Score:3, Interesting)

      by karnal ( 22275 )
      I have a 6600gt with a fan in my main gaming machine, and I would not want to add that kind of noise - no matter how insignificant you may find it - to my home theater machine.

      As such, I went with a fanless Asus FX5200. Turns out that the NVidia DVD/MPEG2 decoder does the best job on this decently powerful system as a PVR box. Plus, the less fans I have, the less "whoosh" noise. Which in a home theater/PVR environment is a necessity.
    • What's not loud to you is really loud to others. You can't run most modern PCs fanless, but you can run them with just one or two fans at a REALLY low voltage, so that they are very quiet and effectively silent at one metre. You really can't say whether or not the fan on the graphics card is loud or not unless you already have taken great care choosing the other components.
    • Or you could just be going deaf like us poor late deafened people.

      I wouldn't notice the noise unless there was a vibration or it was really loud.

  • The 6600 silencer works great. (Score:5, Informative)

    by leoxx ( 992 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @02:41PM (#13678996) Homepage Journal
    I just built an AMD X2 3800 system with the 6600 (non-GT) Silencer for my wife, who is not a video game player, and it is cool, quiet, cheap and plenty fast for what she needs. Combined with the Antec Sonata II case it makes for probably the nicest Linux system I have ever put together.
    • I just built an AMD X2 3800 system with the 6600 (non-GT) Silencer for my wife; it is cool, quiet, cheap and plenty fast

      And I'll bet she still complains that you never do anything sweet. Women...

    • You just built your wife a AMD x2 3800 ... and I'm trying to think of why?

      Don't you think thats a bit over kill .. your disposable income is obviously far greater than mine...

      I just peiced together a p2 system for my wife, which is still overkill for what she needs ...
      • You just built your wife a AMD x2 3800 ... and I'm trying to think of why?

        You're right, I should have gotten her something faster.

        Don't you think thats a bit over kill .. your disposable income is obviously far greater than mine... I just peiced together a p2 system for my wife, which is still overkill for what she needs ...

        Your problem is that you are assuming that my wife is like your wife. Unfortunately I don't think that is true. My wife needs a fast computer because she writes a lot of computationally

        • My wife has a better machine than me!

          She play FFXI a lot, which on the graphics intensive stuff (waterfalls, etc.) with lots of other players in the same area as you (once counted 200) can bury anything less than a 6800GT . She gets really uppity if the frame rate drops below 30fps, so her machine has more memory, a faster processor and much better graphics than any of mine. It also has to have uber fans to cope with it...

  • Should work in free air (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CaptainFork ( 865941 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @02:41PM (#13678998)
    In a closed PC, this device will basically rely on the power supply's fan to circulate air around the heatsink. But if you were to run your PC with the case open (as open as possible) there should be sufficient free-air cooling.

    You should keep your room cool (which you should do anyway when gaming because warmth will make you soperific and slow your reactions). You may also want to use a mosquito net or other gauze-like sheild to stop dust accumulating on your hardware.

    • Something made out of metal would be the better choice, because it would also serve as a Faraday cage, which is important if you use wireless devices like cellphones nearby, or use wireless networking. Computers put out a lot of RFI.

  • This isn't new! (Score:5, Funny)

    by mustafap ( 452510 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @02:41PM (#13679004) Homepage
    I've had a fanless graphics card since 1983. Still got it. Hercules MDA.
    Pah!

    • Re:This isn't new! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Pegasus ( 13291 )
      MDA? You mean those where you can't even shift+pageup in the console, since it only has memory for 80x25 characters? Bah ... grow up man, get a Tseng ET4000. It's still the fastest card in the txt mode.

  • whisper soft! (Score:5, Funny)

    by eck011219 ( 851729 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @02:45PM (#13679039)
    Wow, between this and the silent power supply yesterday [slashdot.org], the only thing that's left is a silent sound card!

  • Gigabyte has a similar model (Score:4, Informative)

    by Stack_13 ( 619071 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @02:52PM (#13679113)
    Gigabyte has a similar model: a heatpipe-cooled Gigabyte Geforce 6600GT with a easy-to-remember name of Gigabyte GV-NX66T128VP. Tom's Hardware [tomshardware.com] has a review of the card. AGP version is also available with a similarly easy model name of GV-N66T128VP.

    I have a PCI Express version of the card in my rig, and it is nice. Gets too hot to touch after running GPU-intensive applications, but those NV chips should be designed to run hot (and they have a thermal protection which throttles down the GPU if it gets overheated).

    Nice to see other manufacturers to notice that people like to have their computers silent.

  • "Fanless" is a bit of an overstatement. The article is very clear on the fact that this card comes with a giant radiator which needs to be cooled by... you guessed it. A fan.

    It's a nice idea that it can use an existing CPU or case fan for cooling, but I would hate to see someone try using this in a passively cooled or water cooled system.

  • Isn't it enough that we have ads on the site already, without being presented with slashvertisements? Mod me a troll if you will, but I think I've been seeing more of this lately.

  • more interesting. I mean we reviewed [amdzone.com] this Asus card 10 days ago. The real news is the 512mb card finally being used by COD2. [amdzone.com]
  • I bought a ASUS 128mb video card about two months ago from newegg. The card has no fan on it, and run relatively cool considering the games I play with it. I paid a mere $42 plus shipping and I couldn't be happier with the performance I got with it.

    I would recommend any ASUS product so far, havent had any problems with my motherboard or video card, both ASUS. If your looking for a cheap, powerful video card with a few high-end features, these cards are ideal. Good work ASUS.

  • I run a completely fanless system. I used a fanless PSU, fanless CPU cooler (heat pipes), fanless graphics, fanless case. I run it with the case open. Not that expensive. Don't need water pumps because there is no water cooling involved. Just fanless parts with big heat sinks and pipes. I keep the air conditioning on in the house anyway so it is cool enough. In the winter, I just don't heat the computer room at all (the computers do it for me).
  • but how does it compare to a ATI 9800Pro? Next time I buy one I probably will get something like this.
  • Why is this innovation?

    Up until 3 years ago, it would be rare to find a video card with a fan in it.
    10 Years ago, most CPU's didn't even have fans on them.

  • 6600GT is overkill for home theater (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Junior J. Junior III ( 192702 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @03:05PM (#13679249) Homepage
    All you need for home theater is good 2-D rendering, 16MB of memory, and a decent TV-out. Seriously. Why do you need 3D accelleration for TV? Does this card even have a TV-tuner?

  • fanless is overrated (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @03:11PM (#13679298) Homepage
    in a HTPC setup fanless = not a big of a deal. hell the projector over my head makes more noise with it's fan that the 6 in the HTPC up by the screen. Oh let's forget the 2 fans in the AMP/THX decoder the 1 fan on the DVD burner/player and the fan in the replayTV.

    if someone is freaked about the tiny bit of noise their fans make so they can watch TV with the volume almost at 0 then they really need to figure things out differently. Every highend home theatre does not waste time with fanlesds and low noise, they simply put the gear outside the room or in a closet with a door.

    Going overboard to buy a high power video card (for an HTPC? Why? a $19.00 64 meg cheapie that has good accelerated video works best) and going nuts to make your PC silent may be your hobby, but it has no real value, espically in a Home theatre where you are supposed to be cranking the volume up past a faint whisper.
    • But the importance of heat and power are are underrated. And most of us don't have loud projectors. If I lived next to a freight train then a silent PC might not be significant.

      I live in a row house. It has old wiring, very little sound insulation, and no central A/C. My living room isn't big enough for a projector even if I wanted one. In that small room, the sound is noticeable - especially when you aren't watching TV. I prefer a low-power system because I can feel the temperature difference in t

  • My Voodoo3 card has no fan, either. I got it five years ago.
  • Next thing you know, there will be video cards cooled by external
    freon (ok, the cfc free stuff) units, like some bozos are now
    using for overclocked cpus. Then what, liquid Helium?

  • Depressing... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Brain_Recall ( 868040 )
    This is simply a depressing review of a unique product (in the sense it's ASUS's first attempt at a silence card cooler). The 6600GT is only compared to the new 7800GT (guess who wins?). There are no attempts at comparing the system to anyone elses silent cooling system (or active systems, for that matter). The whole review gives the feel that this is ExtremeTech's first 6600 to fall upon them.

    What really bothers me, though, is they give no tempreature readings whatsoever. How much does the CPU temp go up

  • So. (Score:2)

    by Cyno01 ( 573917 )
    My All In Wonder 9800Pro is fanless. I installed one of these [zalman.co.kr] on it.

  • Noise (Score:3, Funny)

    by RealityMogul ( 663835 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @03:44PM (#13679586)
    I'll take the time to worry about my practically inaudible video card fan once I achieve the following:

    1.) Install remotely activated spike strips in road for when kids go screaming through at 70mph or have the bass turned up way too loud in their car.
    2.) Aquire a directional EMP generator so I can take out the neighbors stereo when she does yard work.
    3.) Systematically replace every lawn in the neighborhood with artificial turf so I never have to hear a lawnmower again.
    4.) Get rid of girlfriend.

  • I guess I can see the appeal of a fanless graphics card, but not in a home theater. In a home theater you rarely need any sort of high res 3d capabilities, so most people opt for onboard video. If you need DVI for your $4000 LCD TV you can just buy a cheap GeForce/Radeon or whatever with DVI at Fry's for under $50.

    If you want games, get an X-Box or PS2. I find PC games really hard to play on a TV with a keyboard anyway.
  • What's the rationale for comparing a 6600 to a 7800? Of *course* it's going to be slower.

    Why not compare it to a vanilla 6600 and see if it performs any differently since there's quite a bit of benchmarks available for vanilla version?

    If they perform exactly the same (what I'd expect), then we're just asking if noise difference is worth the price difference. Instead, they do gratuitous benchmarks. What a waste.
    • Why do benchmarks at all? The 6600 and 6600GT have been benchmarked to death already. Unless this 6600GT performs substantially differently from standard ones, there's no reason to benchmark anything at all. ...Except maybe some temperature measurements to see how effective that radiator thingy is at keeping the GPU cool. What was the article about again?

  • Help me in my inexperience (Score:3, Interesting)

    by YoungHack ( 36385 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @04:09PM (#13679811)
    I totally don't game, so I have never researched video cards with that in mind. However, I have been interested in fanless video cards (with good Linux drivers). In my browsing, I looked a lot at the Jaton 3DForce Fx-5200LE (http://db.jaton.com/VGAProductDetail.aspx?P_ID=84 228L-T128MAO [jaton.com]).

    What would I be giving up? Efficient playing of video? Just 3D gaming? Just curious.

    How does anyone keep all of this stuff straight?
  • I realize Slashdot isn't really a "news organization" with "real" journalists and such, but seriously. If the guy submitting the article is from the site that is linked, at least put a blurb like Someguy (of pcwhatever.com) writes "(summary)". It looks more like a real news entry rather than a shameless plug.
  • I've never had a video card die any kind of death other than the fan breaking. On my ATI RAGE Fury, the fan just stopped turninig. On my nVidia Ti 4600, one of the blades broke off and the fan wobbled itself to death. On my ATI 9800 Pro, the fan seized to the point that I couldn't even turn it with my finger.

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