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VIDEO PLAYBACK TEST RESULTS
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CPU Usage & Power Consumption
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Video Clip
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Mean CPU Usage
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System Power
Consumption (AC)
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Core 0
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Core 1
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Average
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720p H.264
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26%
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6%
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16%
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~120W
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1080p H.264
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48%
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25%
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36.5%
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~132W
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WMV3 VC-1
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53%
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8%
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30.5%
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~133W
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WVC1 VC-1
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59%
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47%
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53%
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~144W
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The EN8600GT blew through this section as well, with minimal CPU assistance
until our most demanding test clip. No freezing or stuttering was observed.
The 720p H264 and WMV3 clip barely used the second core at all. After some investigation
we found that this behavior, the favoring of one core over another during playback,
was evident in one of our Intel Core 2 Duo based systems as well, so it seems
to be a quirk with Intel dual core processors. On AMD 64 X2 systems, the load
on the cores seems more balanced while playing these clips.
NOISE RECORDINGS IN MP3 FORMAT
These recording starts with 4~10 seconds of "silence"
to let you hear the ambient sound of the room, followed by 10 seconds of the
test system noise. The recording of the Asus video card has its fan at three
settings: Minimum, default, and maximum fan speeds. There's a few seconds of
"silence" inserted between each 10 second stretch of noise to help
you remember the reference ambient.
HOW TO LISTEN & COMPARE
These
recordings were made with a high resolution, studio quality, digital
recording system, then converted to LAME 128kbps encoded MP3s. We've
listened long and hard to ensure there is no audible degradation from
the original WAV files to these MP3s. They represent a quick snapshot
of what we heard during the review. Two recordings of each noise level
were made, one from a distance of one meter, and another
from one foot away.
The
one meter recording is intended to give you an idea of how the subject
of this review sound in actual use — one meter is a reasonable
typical distance between a computer or computer component and your ear.
The recording contains stretches of ambient noise that you can use to
judge the relative loudness of the subject. For best results, set
your volume control so that the ambient noise is just barely audible.
Be aware that very quiet subjects may not be audible — if we couldn't
hear it from one meter, chances are we couldn't record it either!
The
one foot recording is designed to bring out the fine details of the
noise. Use this recording with caution! Although more detailed, it may
not represent how the subject sounds in actual use. It is best to listen
to this recording after you have listened to the one meter recording.
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CONCLUSIONS
After all our testing, we have mixed feelings about the Asus EN8600GT
OC GEAR.
The actual graphics card itself is an exellent product, having
modest power requirement and impressive high definition playback ability in
a compact form. With an above-average cooler and low temperatures, there is
obviously a lot of headroom if you're looking to squeeze better gaming performance
out of the card via overclocking. Gaming is an aspect we are not qualified to
discuss nor much interested in. Gaming performance analyses of the EN8600GT
OC GEAR can be found at a variety of other sites such as Legion
Hardware, HardwareZone
and AMDZone.
The fan is a little too noisy for our liking, though it performs
well. It's obvious from our tests that a slower, quieter fan would've done just
fine. There's also the matter of the extra expense added of the OC Gear unit.
It's hard to justify the additional cost when for the same price, you can purchase
the next highest model, the 8600GTS. It's not a particularly useful piece of
hardware, as much of its functionality can be reproduced with various software
programs. Fan speed control can be customized and overclocking done on the fly
from the desktop with very little interaction by the user, and frame-rate can
be displayed on-screen in almost all modern games. It'd be a lot more useful
if all the information was displayed numerically, or if you could set dynamic
fan/overclocking settings using the panel. Reaching for the dial and adjusting
each setting is tedious and not knowing exactly how high or low you're adjusting
them is unsettling.
We applaud the innovation shown by Asus, but it's clear that improvements
can definitely be made to the OC Gear module to make it more functional and
worthwhile. It would also be advisable to bundle it with a high-end card instead,
as the price difference wouldn't be as glaring and perspective buyers would
be more willing to spend a bit more.
Many thanks to ASUSTeK
for the sample of the EN8600GT OC GEAR/HTDP/256M
* * *
SPCR Articles of Related Interest:
Sytrin KuFormula VF1 Plus
graphics card cooler
Fanless PCIe
Graphics Cards from Asus and Aopen
Gigabyte GV-N66256DP Fanless AGP video card
VGA Cooler Roundup: A
Thermalright, two Zalmans, and an Arctic Cooling
* * *
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this article in the SPCR Forums.
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