The Gigabyte 8600GTS Silent-Pipe 3 Pictured

I found this picture posted elsewhere, and thought I'd post it for those in waiting:



I suppose those mean-looking diagonal blades are there to help convect the air up towards the PSU, but if there is a side fan mounted in the case, it might just blow air backwards through the cooler, from the looks of it. But that might work even better.

It's good news that the 8600 will come with passive cooling, I think!

nice finding. I been looking for a passively cool 8600gts. I wonder what the price tag on this monster is. And from the looks of it, it looks like a dual-slot card. -_-...
Somewhere I heard, these new 8600 cards are running much cooler than 7600 cards, then why does it need a bigger heatsink than 7600?

Yeah, and it's basically triple slot because you need room for air to circulate around a passive card, put another card up next to it and it will heat up rather quickly.

I don't know where you heard that, everywhere I've seen the GF8600GT and GTS are more than the GF7600GT. The GTS is around the 75W max of the PCIe slot, and the GT is only a bit underneath. The GF7600GT sips around 50W.

We'll have to wait for places like Xbit Labs and Guru3D to run them with the power meters, but I suspect that they will be at least 10W more power consuming than the GF7600GT, likely closer to the GF7900GS in power consumption.

Another consideration is the concerns over idle 2D clock speeds, if the 2D clock issues are a prblem then passive cooling could be an issue if it's always running near 100% even when in low power mode.

Definitely a nice option for workstations if the heat isn't an issue, and I like the fact that some of the cooling fins extend outside the case.

8600GTS & Supreme Commander? 8O
that would be madness!

i saw some benchies on the web & anything less than a 7900GTX+Core2DuoE6300 will show single digits frame rates when you play the game on a medium size map with +2players(if you set a hard AI as your enemy he will fill the map with tanks & building then your computer will begin to beg for exiting the game...).lowering the details wont help at all...
on my previews 7800GT, i couldn't finish the game because at the start of the last mission i had 8~15 FPS...didn't have time to test it on 8800GTS but i know that i will see no difference.
The game really needs huge CPU power that i don't have...
so they should write this on the 8600GTS box:
"buy this card only if you have a Core2Duo E6600 or higher.+3GHz Core 2 Duo is recommended!"

(Psst... Gigabyte changed the picture...)

Anyway, the pic is still there, but the file name has changed.

8O Gigabyte hacked my brain!!
It just so happens i was waiting for them to come out with a passive 8600gt(s)!!
It just so happens i've been wanting to buy Supreme Commander!!
It just so happens the gov't took the $$ today that i've saved up. :x

Why did the release date fall on tax day?!?
WHY?!?!