Graphics Card Quiet: Gigabyte's Silent-Pipe II Cooling

The Gigabyte NX76T: 7600 GT With Silent-Pipe II Technology

Gigabyte's NX76T has all the bells and whistles that Nvidia's excellent 7600 GT offers-and more. Specifications of all 7600 GTs that Nvidia lists on its Website include:

Swipe to scroll horizontally
Geforce 7600 GT
Graphics Bus TechnologyPCI Express
Memory (MB)256
Memory Interface (MB)128
Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec)22.4
Fill Rate (Billion pixels/sec)6.7
Vertices/Second (Millions)700
Pixels per clock (peak)12
RAMDACs (MHz)400

The 7600 GT's specifications are nothing new, and the card already has an excellent price/performance reputation as the fastest video card with a 128-bit memory interface that money can buy.

In addition to these features, Gigabyte's 7600 GT with Silent-Pipe II Technology sports the following features:

  • Supports Nvidia SLI Technology;
  • Supports PCI Express;
  • Features dual DVI-I / D-sub (by adapter)/TV-OUT;
  • Supports HDTV function and HDTV cable enclosed;
  • Unique "Silent Pipe II" Design;
  • Hot Game: Serious Sam 2 bundled.

The card is also SLI-compatible, so it's good to know that Silent Pipe II technology does not prohibit this feature. Also, the card features two kinds of TV-outputs, S-video as well as component-video outputs for HDTV. Finally, it's always nice to see a quality-game title bundled with any video card, and Serious Sam II is a great showcase for the 7600 GT's power and technology.

The 256 MB of video memory on the card we tested was Samsung K4J52324QC-BC14. Samsung classifies this as 700 MHz memory, but Samsung is known to be conservative with their ratings so we hoped the memory would be overclocking-friendly.

As you can see, the card appears unique to say, the least. But while the cooler is unlike others on the market, it's certainly not unattractive or difficult to install. In fact, installation was a breeze as the card is not particularly long, and it doesn't even require a discrete power cable.

But enough theory, let's see how the card performs.