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- Date:
- Monday , May 19, 2008
- Author:
- Matthew Krysiak
- Editor:
- Brent Justice
- Google +1
ASUS EN9600GT Silent
The GeForce 9600 GT currently represents an amazing value. For those looking for a completely silent video card ASUS may have just the ticket: The passively cooled ASUS EN9600GT Silent. We see how this silent card performs in today's top 3D shooters.
ASUS
ASUSTeK Computer Inc. is one of the largest and most successful computer hardware manufacturers in the world. A Taiwan-based company, they manufacture a wide variety of computer hardware, including motherboards, video cards, optical drives, notebooks, networking equipment, and barebones desktop and server systems, among many others. In 2006, their products received 2,168 awards from various enthusiasts and IT related media outlets. Their over 100,000 employees shipped 55 million motherboards in 2006; that means one in three desktop PCs sold in 2006 were powered by an ASUS motherboards.
Today we are going to be taking a look at ASUS’s latest passively cooled video card: The ASUS EN9600GT Silent
The GeForce 9600 GT
On the 21st of February 2008 we took our first look at the GeForce 9600 GT. It has a reference design of 650MHz GPU frequency, 1.625GHz shader frequency, and 512MB of GDDR3 at 1.8GHz memory on a 256-bit memory bus. One of our final thoughts in that evaluation was if we could find it for under $169 what a great value it would be. Soon after that article our wish came true and GeForce 9600 GTs have become great video cards for those with a budget.
So far we have evaluated video cards from Palit, MSI, ASUS, EVGA, and KFA2. The most notable of these cards was the EVGA e-GeForce 9600 GT SSC with the highest manufacturer’s overclock on the GPU and the Palit GeForce 9600 GT Sonic which gave us an amazing out amount of video out options. Today we take a look in another direction, a passively cooled GeForce 9600 GT from ASUS. Silence is golden, right?
ASUS EN9600GT Silent
The ASUS EN9600GT Silent uses the reference design clock speeds on the GPU, the streaming processors, and the memory. This gives it a 650MHz GPU core speed, a shader frequency of 1.625GHz, and a frequency of 1.8GHz on the 512MB GDDR3 memory. It sports a passively cooled heatsink that spreads out over the entire card. As with all ASUS video cards it has a 3 year limited warranty .
The ASUS EN9600GT Silent came in an average sized box with an eye catching green and black color scheme. Opening the front lid reveals information about the ASUS SmartDoctor, a utility that allows you to monitor the fan, the GPU temperature, the memory temperature, and overclock the video card. Though when we used it we were only able to see the GPU temperature and overclocking with it was difficult because the unrealistically small slider bars led to poor frequency control. On the lid itself is information about the passive heatsink or what ASUS calls the “V-Cool Heatsink.”
The ASUS EN9600GT Silent boasts an impressive array of fins that even seem to try and duct air out through the back of a case. The dark blue PCB board along with the heatsink makes this card a site to behold and something you could be proud of to have sitting in your case. Even with this massive heatsink none of the memory modules are covered. This is a little concerning because without any air movement or heatsinks we could end up with some hot memory. Looking at the fifth image of the card’s front; you can see the video card’s yellow DVI port that is capable of outputting HDMI when using an adapter. You can also see from this angle that it is a dual slot cooling solution that air can escape out to the back of your case. As usual, there is an SLI connector on the top, and a one 6-pin auxiliary power connector on the end.
On the back we see something unique for a GeForce 9600 GT based video card: memory modules. This card uses 8x64MB memory modules instead of the standard 4x128MB configuration. The memory modules it uses are Samsung K4J52340E-BJ1A that are designed to run at 1GHz. This is good news for us overclockers since the memory is only running at 900MHz from the manufacturer. The bundle includes a “Speed Setup Guide”, a driver CD, a manual CD, an HDTV component video output dongle, an internal audio connector, PCIe to Molex adapter, and a DVI to HDMI adaptor.
Focus
We will be comparing the ASUS EN9600GT Silent against a NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT and an ATI Radeon HD 3870. Currently you can find the ASUS EN9600GT Silent for $139.99 after mail-in-rebate and you can also find an ATI Radeon HD 3870 for the same $139.99 after mail-in-rebate. A NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT is only a mere $10 more at $149.99 after mail-in-rebate
We will begin by evaluating the gameplay experience in Crysis, Assassin’s Creed, and CoD 4. We will then do apples-to-apples graph for each game using the highest playable settings of the ASUS EN9600GT Silent. Finally we end with overclocking and comparing the temperatures with a NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT reference video card.