Power
A card's GPU, clock speeds, and overall design determine the kind of power draw it creates on your system. Moving parts on the heat sink sometimes require more power to run, which is what might give silent cards a slight advantage in this area. However, just because there are no moving parts on a card doesn't mean that it won't still draw large amounts of power. Only one of our cards required an external power connection from the power supply; the rest simply drew their power from the PCIe slot. The ASUS EN7800 GT Top Silent, our most powerful card, required a 6-pin PCI Express power connector, and it's no surprise that we saw the highest power draw from this card.
We tested power by measuring the total wattage of the system with each card installed in two different states. The first state is while the system is idle, without any programs running, and the second state is under load, by running a graphically intensive benchmark. The benchmark we used to stress the graphics cards was 3DMark06, specifically, the fill rate (single and multi-texturing) and the pixel shader tests.
We see initially how while idle, the system draws less power than what you might expect to see for some of these graphics cards. The highest idle power level we see is 135 watts for the Asus 1600 XT and 7800 GT, as well as the Gigabyte 7300 GT and X1300 Pro. The ASUS 7600 GS 512 gets the lowest idle power wattage, which is somewhat interesting as it certainly isn't the least powerful card. With a total difference in idle power of only 10W, though, most of the cards are doing a good job under idle conditions. Let's see what happens when we actually put the cards to work.
As expected, the ASUS 7800 GT gives the system a significantly higher power draw under load, followed by the Gigabyte 7600 GT, the second most powerful card. The fact that these two cards are the most power-hungry makes sense, as does the fact that the ASUS 6600 GT gets a similarly high load wattage, since this is an older, less efficient part. The Gigabyte X1300 draws the least amount of power under load; this isn't surprising given its low performance, though the Sparkle 7300 GS Ultra 2 is somewhat more power-hungry in spite of the fact that it performs about the same. The Gigabyte 7300 GS, another low-performance card, gets an even higher wattage due to its faster memory.
Aside from the few highest performance cards, all of these cards get very similar results in terms of power draw. This similarity and consistency in power draw among all of these cards seems to say something about the design of silent cards in general. While it is technically possible to cool more power hungry GPUs with a fanless solution, most manufacturers are targeting lower heat GPUs for their silent cards, as the cooling solutions do not need to be as extravagant (or costly).
Heat
As we touched on in the introduction, controlling heat levels is essential to the smooth operation of a graphics card. Because there are no moving parts in any of these cards, their heat sinks must be designed to provide adequate heat dissipation over long time periods, as most people don't sit down to play games for only a few minutes at a time. Whether or not these silent cards run cool or hot will depend not only on the card, but on things like your case ventilation and environment in general. Also, heat levels may vary even among different parts of the same model, but we can get a general idea of the heat that will be generated by these different cards while idle and under stress.
Similar to the way we tested power consumption, we measured the heat level of the card in two different states: idle and after five minutes of stress testing. In order to stress test the card, we would traditionally measure heat levels after a few looped game benchmarks but for this review, we made use of ATI Tool's "Scan for Artifacts" function on their "fuzzy cube" 3D view. This came in very handy for us, because it stresses both ATI and NVIDIA cards by basically drawing a 3D cube with some kind of fuzz map over and over. We found that about five minutes of "scanning" with this tool gave us the same level of stress as running our usual number of Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory benchmark loops, only it was much easier to accomplish the stress testing.
Unfortunately, we weren't able to include any ATI cards in our heat tests, because apparently none of these cards have on-die temperature sensors to give us heat level readings. We were able to use NVIDIA's built-in heat meter in the driver to get readings from the NVIDIA cards, however, so we will look at these numbers for now.
Something we see right away is that the EVGA 7600 GS has a much lower idle temperature than the other cards. The Albatron 7300 GT gets a fairly low temperature while idle, and interestingly the tiny Sparkle 7300 GS Ultra 2 gets the highest idle temperature of the group.
Unsurprisingly, the ASUS 7800 GT gets a dramatically higher temperature than the rest of the cards while under load -- high enough to perhaps warrant some concern. Generally, a core temperature this high is bad news, but it would seem the ASUS EN7800 GT Top Silent was designed to be able to handle temperatures this high. This might be an issue however for someone with poor case ventilation or those who live in a very hot climate without conventional cooling in their building.
The two coolest operating cards under load are the same ones that were the coolest while idle: the Albatron 7300 GT and EVGA 7600 GS, with the Albatron card running slightly cooler. Again we see that the Sparkle 7300 GS Ultra 2 generates quite a bit of heat considering its small size and low performance, though the small size is the likely culprit. The high heat and power load for this card are both negatives, and since it performs very poorly in most of the games the only plus the Sparkle 7300 GS Ultra 2 has going for it is it's small size. It will fit in just about any computer case, no matter how small or crowded it is. This isn't saying much for the card however, and unless you can find it for a ridiculously low price we don't recommend buying one.
A card's GPU, clock speeds, and overall design determine the kind of power draw it creates on your system. Moving parts on the heat sink sometimes require more power to run, which is what might give silent cards a slight advantage in this area. However, just because there are no moving parts on a card doesn't mean that it won't still draw large amounts of power. Only one of our cards required an external power connection from the power supply; the rest simply drew their power from the PCIe slot. The ASUS EN7800 GT Top Silent, our most powerful card, required a 6-pin PCI Express power connector, and it's no surprise that we saw the highest power draw from this card.
We tested power by measuring the total wattage of the system with each card installed in two different states. The first state is while the system is idle, without any programs running, and the second state is under load, by running a graphically intensive benchmark. The benchmark we used to stress the graphics cards was 3DMark06, specifically, the fill rate (single and multi-texturing) and the pixel shader tests.
We see initially how while idle, the system draws less power than what you might expect to see for some of these graphics cards. The highest idle power level we see is 135 watts for the Asus 1600 XT and 7800 GT, as well as the Gigabyte 7300 GT and X1300 Pro. The ASUS 7600 GS 512 gets the lowest idle power wattage, which is somewhat interesting as it certainly isn't the least powerful card. With a total difference in idle power of only 10W, though, most of the cards are doing a good job under idle conditions. Let's see what happens when we actually put the cards to work.
As expected, the ASUS 7800 GT gives the system a significantly higher power draw under load, followed by the Gigabyte 7600 GT, the second most powerful card. The fact that these two cards are the most power-hungry makes sense, as does the fact that the ASUS 6600 GT gets a similarly high load wattage, since this is an older, less efficient part. The Gigabyte X1300 draws the least amount of power under load; this isn't surprising given its low performance, though the Sparkle 7300 GS Ultra 2 is somewhat more power-hungry in spite of the fact that it performs about the same. The Gigabyte 7300 GS, another low-performance card, gets an even higher wattage due to its faster memory.
Aside from the few highest performance cards, all of these cards get very similar results in terms of power draw. This similarity and consistency in power draw among all of these cards seems to say something about the design of silent cards in general. While it is technically possible to cool more power hungry GPUs with a fanless solution, most manufacturers are targeting lower heat GPUs for their silent cards, as the cooling solutions do not need to be as extravagant (or costly).
Heat
As we touched on in the introduction, controlling heat levels is essential to the smooth operation of a graphics card. Because there are no moving parts in any of these cards, their heat sinks must be designed to provide adequate heat dissipation over long time periods, as most people don't sit down to play games for only a few minutes at a time. Whether or not these silent cards run cool or hot will depend not only on the card, but on things like your case ventilation and environment in general. Also, heat levels may vary even among different parts of the same model, but we can get a general idea of the heat that will be generated by these different cards while idle and under stress.
Similar to the way we tested power consumption, we measured the heat level of the card in two different states: idle and after five minutes of stress testing. In order to stress test the card, we would traditionally measure heat levels after a few looped game benchmarks but for this review, we made use of ATI Tool's "Scan for Artifacts" function on their "fuzzy cube" 3D view. This came in very handy for us, because it stresses both ATI and NVIDIA cards by basically drawing a 3D cube with some kind of fuzz map over and over. We found that about five minutes of "scanning" with this tool gave us the same level of stress as running our usual number of Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory benchmark loops, only it was much easier to accomplish the stress testing.
Unfortunately, we weren't able to include any ATI cards in our heat tests, because apparently none of these cards have on-die temperature sensors to give us heat level readings. We were able to use NVIDIA's built-in heat meter in the driver to get readings from the NVIDIA cards, however, so we will look at these numbers for now.
Something we see right away is that the EVGA 7600 GS has a much lower idle temperature than the other cards. The Albatron 7300 GT gets a fairly low temperature while idle, and interestingly the tiny Sparkle 7300 GS Ultra 2 gets the highest idle temperature of the group.
Unsurprisingly, the ASUS 7800 GT gets a dramatically higher temperature than the rest of the cards while under load -- high enough to perhaps warrant some concern. Generally, a core temperature this high is bad news, but it would seem the ASUS EN7800 GT Top Silent was designed to be able to handle temperatures this high. This might be an issue however for someone with poor case ventilation or those who live in a very hot climate without conventional cooling in their building.
The two coolest operating cards under load are the same ones that were the coolest while idle: the Albatron 7300 GT and EVGA 7600 GS, with the Albatron card running slightly cooler. Again we see that the Sparkle 7300 GS Ultra 2 generates quite a bit of heat considering its small size and low performance, though the small size is the likely culprit. The high heat and power load for this card are both negatives, and since it performs very poorly in most of the games the only plus the Sparkle 7300 GS Ultra 2 has going for it is it's small size. It will fit in just about any computer case, no matter how small or crowded it is. This isn't saying much for the card however, and unless you can find it for a ridiculously low price we don't recommend buying one.
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TheInternal - Tuesday, September 12, 2006 - link
It's wonderful to see Anandtech take the time to review silent products. I've really been trying to quiet down my PC, and seeing this review gave me some further encouragement. With rumors of ASUS acquiring XFX, it will be interesting to see if Anandtech decides to review the passively colled XFX 7950 GT with heat pipes that look awfully reminescent of the ones from the ASUS 7800 you reviewed.I'm also curious to see if any 7900 GS cards become available with passive cooling soon.
Richey02hg - Tuesday, September 5, 2006 - link
I was just curious if any of these cards are AGP? or they all PCI Express only? and also, its hard to tell since an x800xt all in one wonder isnt in there. But would any of these be an upgrade over that? Because I have to admit, just seeing that word "silent" makes me happy cause my GPU is insanely loudJarredWalton - Wednesday, September 6, 2006 - link
All are PCIe. I'm not sure if there are any silent AGP cards out there other than very low end components. As for the X800 XT, that is roughly equivalent to the 7800 GS in performance, albeit without SM 3.0 support. 7600 GT would also be pretty similar in performance I think. I would recommend holding onto your current system as long as you can, and when he can no longer stand the performance it offers do a wholesale upgrade to PCI-E GPU and motherboard, and probably a new CPU and RAM is well. At that point, you might as well just go ahead and buy a completely new system -- you could even try selling off your current system to recoup some of the cost.Richey02hg - Thursday, September 7, 2006 - link
thanks for the advice, Im actually planning to get a laptop in 2006 and thanks to your review im definetly waiting for that second wave (forget the name) of the core 2 duos for laptops :)Eddie Lin - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
Gigabyte seems don't need reserve SLI bridge seems 7300GS only go with S/W SLI and don't need bridge. Is really good heatsink design on this cardDerekWilson - Friday, September 1, 2006 - link
Thanks Eddie --We have added this information to the article.
yacoub - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
It's an absolute joke that Asus and Gigabyte don't have silently-cooled 7900GTs out yet. The card requires less power and runs cooler than the 7800GT did. It's a shoe-in to get a silent version. wtf.This is practically a roundup of grandfathers and retirees when you include a 7800GT. ;P
nullpointerus - Friday, September 1, 2006 - link
Maybe they are trying to get rid of old cards without dropping the price too much?yyrkoon - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
Alot of people that would consider buying a fanless GPU wouldnt even care if it DID make tons of noise, some of us live in deserts, where its extremely dusty. There is nothing like owning an air compressor or two, just for 'dusting' you house, shops, and PC / electronics innards.I guess I'm one of the few people who actually enjoy having a fan or two on while I'm sleeping for background noise, but less moving parts means longer part life here in the Nevada desert. However, I own a eVGA 7600GT KO, that has a fan on it, and you know what, I have a really hard time hearing it from 6 feet away. In fact, the 120mm low RPM fans that came with my Lian Li case make more noise, and they dont make much noise themselves.
I think its a great idea that these manufactuers are making products like this, but at the same time, for me personally its not really an option. I only buy parts from a compnay with a good reputation, and offer excellent customer support, and hence I'm very picky about who I buy from. At the same time, I know what I want, and if something passive isnt availible on say a 7600GT (which is what I wanted for this current system), and at the same time, from a company I would normally buy parts from, then I wont bother. I would think it a better option to buy the part you wanted for a video card, then buy an aftermarket passive cooler if it comes down to that (which would probably void your warranty, so again, for some of us, not really an option).
So basicly, what it boils down to, is that I have to buy a graphics card with a fan to get what I want, and if problems later ensue, its a good thing I have a can of miracle oil around, and a few saringes . . .
Josh Venning - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
These are some good points; it's true that with less moving parts you would theoretically see longer life and resistence to dust and dirt, something that could be a plus. And while it's true that a normal graphics card (with a fan on it) will be pretty hard to hear from a little ways away inside your computer case, the idea is that some people need that extra bit of silence for whatever reason, and every extra fan adds to the noise level on the system. For myself, when recording sound/music with a computer, getting things as quiet as possible is very important, so this is one case where eliminating even a couple of dbs is worth buying a silent gpu for. (especially if, like myself, your recording computer is one you also want to be able to play games on.)