Seven of NVIDIA's Latest and Greatest Cards Tested

Noise

The fan's speed remains constant regardless of operating mode. Gigabyte's card really shines in this respect, as the Zalman cooler is much quieter than the standard one-slot cooler of the standard GT cards. While the fan on the Asus card whirs at a very audible 54.3 dB(A), Gigabyte's Zalman solution is less noisy at 44.5 dB(A). While this is still audible when the system is idle or while performing office tasks, in a gaming situation the fan's noise will be drowned out by in-game music and sound effects.

Tools And Software

The software bundle comprises the software DVD player Power DVD 6 as well as the game Spell Force.

As with the 6600 GT, the most important tool, aside from the graphics driver is Gigabyte's VTuner 2, which allows the user to monitor and change the card's clock speeds. A right-click on the taskbar icon opens up a context menu with more information and additional utilities:

• VGA BIOS Writer lets you save and easily update the graphics card's BIOS.
• Color Adjust lets you fine-tune brightness, contrast and gamma level.
• Execute Update checks for new versions of the utilities on Gigabyte's servers.
• VGA Info isn't terribly useful.