Good review, thanks!

I think it would be interesting to compare the cooler with a known passive benchmark like an Accelero. Also interesting would be testing with a low speed fan mounted directly to the HS as done in the Accelero review.

Thanks for keeping the articles coming!!

When is Asus releasing the card? I didn't see a release date in the review and Asus's website has no mention of it on the products page. I found the press release here: http://www.asus.com.tw/news_show.aspx?id=10645 ... but when can I buy it?

Am I missing something?

Those heat pipes don't look like aluminum to me. Perhaps they're nickel-plated copper.

Good review!

I'd be curious to know what temperatures could be achieved using the Antec Fusion, as it has an airflow pattern which doesn't usually perform well with this type of arrangement.

Any chance of a quick test?

I would stick to my S1 any day of the week, its cooling is rather poor by comparison. My X1950 Pro is also a ~65W card and it hits 60-65C at the most, with a single Nexus 120mm removing air from the case that doesnt spin faster than 850rpm.

For non-modders with reasonable airflow this would be a decent buy.

I do have a question about the testing. Were any of the blanking plates (AKA spines) removed from the back of the case during testing.???


Andy

PS: I ususally find screwing in double height cards is easiest using the middle screw hole as it will stop it drooping under the weight of the cooler.

that bit of marketese in the press release was pretty funny ..

Before that, does it even fit in a NSK2400/Fusion?

nice review and very timely. Just a shame I can't buy one here in Australia

One thing to bear in mind though - Techreport tested both a 256Mb and 512mb version of the 3850 and the 512mb version had very similar power draw at idle and load as the 3870. The two models are after all pretty much the same card just with different clocks and, for the 3850-256mb, memory amount. So, considering the 9600GT is a 512mb card I don't think it does too badly, especially considering its performance.

In fact, if you consider price as well as power and performance it's a pretty obvious choice for a gaming system. If you're after movie playback then none of these cards are ideal - a 3650 or 8500GT would do perfectly fine.

I wouldn't think so, the heatpipe would probably hit the top panel when trying to close it.

A number of us are running 9600GTs with Acceleros. See this thread for more info.

The Asus looks okay, but I'm glad I bought the ECS S2 card instead.

Great review Mike,

Nice to see a stock passive cooling solution doing a decent job, something which we’re not all that used too. Now all that’s missing is for the manufactures to stop christening their solutions (and at times products) with such juvenile names, hmm; I must be getting old and grumpy...

It is nice to see these cards oem with passive coolers...

But once again, I immediately spotted errors (from my years as a crazy pc builder)

1. The heatsink has no sealer around gpu edge.. (as far as I could tell by photo)with the mention of four metal spring loaded springs...not good. Once that 650 gets going, I guarantee a mystery blipper with fans nearby
2. For some folks, exiting out the back like its a free worls inside your standing atx case is always bad news. There is an exhaust fan for...exhausting. why take the crap physics back in?
3. My third observation: I really like the thicker fin part in conjunction with the real reactive cooler, the card will take a case fan close by (typically the bios zapping front one), that is all good except if you refer to number one and think of a fan with just a whisper going by the hot GPU space between the heatsink.

If you could add some foam type stuff that alot of gpu heatsinkers use around the edge to the heatsink, I would call it good, except for the exit out the back, it is an exit in...
Have they ever got coolers correct?

Can I get a link to that article? I can't seem to find the one where they compare the two.

let me see - here is where they compared the standard 3850-256mb and 3870-512mb cards, then here they tested a bunch of 3850/70-512mb cards and here is the clearest demonstration of similar idle power draw between the 3850 and 3870 512mb cards. Load draw is consistantly higher in the 3870 cards, but the difference doesn't seem to be more than ~15W (give or take) compared with the 3850-512mb cards.

Certainly not as clear a difference with the original 3850-256mb cards. For me, if I'm going to stick with my 19in monitor for the near future a 3850-256mb card is the best bet (low power, slightly cheaper) otherwise a 9600GT is a better bet.

Not used to? I beg to differ. Gigabyte's latest passive 9600GT also does well. Their previous passive cooling solutions have been alright, too. (I have a passive GeForce 6600, and a passive GeForce 8600GTS from them, and both work fine.)

Somehow, graphics cards with passive cooling only get bad reviews from people who don't know that no heatsink, no matter how big, will be any good without airflow. Go figure.

here's another TR article showing similar idle power draws for 3870/70-512mb cards. Incredibly the 9600GT undercuts the 3850-512mb at load, hmm.

Price is steadily dropping on this card - now only $110 (with $20 MIR) at Newegg and Zipzoomfly.

http://www.infonec.com/site/main.php?mo ... &id=353353

$120 in Canada.

technic3d (German) has a review of a 9400GT , and it looks much better Wattage-wise

Can we have a review of one of these cards? I'm looking to replace my 8500GT, and possibly want to stay with nvidia, also because of the new cool hardware decoding of h264 for the purpose of encoding (don grabst dgavcindex using nvidia chips)

The MSI silent cards are much easier to find here in the UK, and their 9400gt/9500gt models have an HDMI port which is a bonus.

For some user comment see
http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/products/vga-cards/msi-nx9400gt-md512h

As long as my 28" WS CRT still works, I'm stuck on svideo.

so would like to see some testing done if that works at all with the new cards tested