Gigabyte GV-N66256DP Fanless Graphics Card

MikeC · **Posted:** Mon Apr 10, 2006 8:11 am

cAPSLOCK · **Posted:** Mon Apr 10, 2006 8:43 am

In page two of the arcticle you say that the small heatsink is for the GPU, and the large heatsinks are for the board... I think that the big ones are for the GPU (and perhaps memory) while the small one is for the HSI chip or whatever you call it (PCIe->AGP conversion).

Aris · **Posted:** Mon Apr 10, 2006 10:31 am

isnt a vanilla 6600 a little dated to be reviewd? nvidia just released a passive single slot 7600gs' for $150 USD. not that it wasnt a good review, its just about a year late or so.

MikeC · **Posted:** Mon Apr 10, 2006 10:50 am

Aris wrote:

isnt a vanilla 6600 a little dated to be reviewd? nvidia just released a passive single slot 7600gs' for $150 USD. not that it wasnt a good review, its just about a year late or so.

Maybe, but we only got this a month or two ago... and it may still be a viable option for lots of silencers. Better late than never? :wink:

Besides, it gave us reason to set up a noise/power-focused vidcard test platform.

atha · **Posted:** Mon Apr 10, 2006 11:14 am

Aris wrote:

isnt a vanilla 6600 a little dated to be reviewd? nvidia just released a passive single slot 7600gs' for $150 USD.

$150 won't get you far with those, if you happen to have an AGP-only system - whereas passive 6600 AGP gives you a nice quiet VGA with hardware HD (MPEG-2, WMV, H.264) decode acceleration. As the review stated, the more likely market for these is home theater, not gaming.

mattthemuppet · **Posted:** Mon Apr 10, 2006 3:20 pm

nice review - shame it wasn't one of those Gigabyte cards with the new Silentpipe2 HS though, I'm really interested to see how it stacks up. Looking forward to seeing more of these as there's such a paucity of silent PC orientated graphics card reviews

crabnebula · **Posted:** Mon Apr 10, 2006 6:22 pm

Thanks for this review.

This card might seem old to some for gaming, but for HTPC use it is still very capable -- IMHO it remains the best option for an AGP system if silence and high quality video playback are primary concerns. (The 6600 and 6600 GT have the broadest PureVideo feature-set among AGP offerings, on par with the newer 7800GS).

However, I REALLY WISH that Zalman and/or Gigabyte would offer this heatpipe as a separate product for those of us looking to silence our fan-equipped 6600/GTs. Unfortunately, the ZM80 does not support mounting on the AGP 6600 GT (it can be done but is far from elegant and requires a lot of room in the case) and unless I'm wrong, there are no 3rd party heatpipe designs that support the AGP versions of these cards, due to the peculiar board layout with the HSI chip. Too bad because they are otherwise perfect for HTPCs.

timmytimmytimmy · **Posted:** Mon Apr 10, 2006 11:51 pm

cAPSLOCK wrote:

In page two of the arcticle you say that the small heatsink is for the GPU, and the large heatsinks are for the board... I think that the big ones are for the GPU (and perhaps memory) while the small one is for the HSI chip or whatever you call it (PCIe->AGP conversion).

Yes, that is correct. The small heatsink is for the PCIe-AGP conversion chip. Main heatsink covers GPU + memory. At least for my AGP 6600GT card(I took it apart to see:)) N66T128VP I think.

smilingcrow · **Posted:** Tue Apr 11, 2006 4:38 am

crabnebula wrote:

This card might seem old to some for gaming, but for HTPC use it is still very capable -- IMHO it remains the best option for an AGP system if silence and high quality video playback are primary concerns. (The 6600 and 6600 GT have the broadest PureVideo feature-set among AGP offerings, on par with the newer 7800GS).

I owned the model being reviewed here and was very impressed with the image quality of MPEG2 footage when using the nVidia PureVideo decoder.
If you are only interested in viewing SD video footage, the GeForce 6200 AGP has nearly all the same PureVideo SD features implemented as the 6600, but is considerably cheaper and probably more frugal in the power department. The 6200 is very limited in its support of PureVideo HD video processing features though.

N.B.
I measured the power draw at idle of the reviewed Gigabyte 6600 as being 10W more than a 128MB FX5200.

Firetech · **Posted:** Thu Apr 13, 2006 1:47 am

mattthemuppet wrote:

nice review - shame it wasn't one of those Gigabyte cards with the new Silentpipe2 HS though, I'm really interested to see how it stacks up.

Look here then. Mmmm, sexy...

jmke · **Posted:** Thu Apr 13, 2006 2:00 am

Wonder where you got that link from Firetech

Good review, the Real Time HDR works nice, but takes away CPUburn cycles, which explains the lower CPU temp.

anyway here's another 6-Way passive vga card roundup

Firetech · **Posted:** Thu Apr 13, 2006 2:30 am

jmke wrote:

Wonder where you got that link from Firetech

Well I was visiting one of my favourite sites and.... :lol:

Deliriou5 · **Posted:** Thu Apr 13, 2006 7:07 am

Hey all,

I have this card just found out that you can use RivaTuner 2.0 RC 15.8 to monitor the GPU temp. I had always heard that this could not be done, so I was very happy to find out that it can be done. Mine is Idling around 57 C in my 38 C case. It hit 71 in the aquamark3 benchmark. Just an FYI

-Dave

vitaminc · **Posted:** Thu Apr 13, 2006 8:36 am

IMO the design of this card is inline with its peers (silient pipe stuff). However the GPU isn't worth it to be reviewed due to its out dated specs. It doesn't even do decent Pure Video HDMI decoding.

Captain Spaulding · **Posted:** Fri Apr 14, 2006 11:22 pm

I am unable to find this card for sale anywhere in the US. Does anybody know where it is in stock?

Ralf Hutter · **Posted:** Sat Apr 15, 2006 5:09 am

Captain Spaulding wrote:

I am unable to find this card for sale anywhere in the US. Does anybody know where it is in stock?

Here's where I got mine.

Felger Carbon · **Posted:** Sat Apr 15, 2006 6:50 am

[quote="Ralf Hutter"Here's where I got mine.[/quote]

"DVI Openbox"? Openbox??

Al · **Posted:** Sat Apr 15, 2006 6:54 am

Felger Carbon wrote:

Ralf Hutter wrote:

Here's where I got mine.

"DVI Openbox"? Openbox??

A bit further down the page, someone very helpfully wrote:

Open-box; May not include full accessories (i.e.: driver, cable, manual, fan, software, etc.)

Mike_P · **Posted:** Sat Apr 15, 2006 7:12 am

vitaminc wrote:

IMO the design of this card is inline with its peers (silient pipe stuff). However the GPU isn't worth it to be reviewed due to its out dated specs. It doesn't even do decent Pure Video HDMI decoding.

HDMI decoding huh? care to explain what that is? :roll:

PureVideo works on the 6600 series.

Quote:

I have this card just found out that you can use RivaTuner 2.0 RC 15.8 to monitor the GPU temp. I had always heard that this could not be done

correct, also, on some cards (like mine, eVGA 6600gt agp) i had to hack the BIOS bin to enable the temp monitoring within the driver.

Deliriou5 · **Posted:** Sun Apr 16, 2006 5:03 pm

Well, I got mine off of E-bay. They had "end users" selling them, along with e-bay e-tailers. I did end up having a problem with mine, so I RMA'd it back to Gigabite. It was still under its 3 year warrenty :wink:

The one I got back from them works great.

-Dave

perplex · **Posted:** Tue Apr 18, 2006 4:05 am

Nice review and IS still relevant for non-gamers. However I may have to look for a PCI-E passive card because I don't think the latest motherboards support AGP anymore? I'd like to get something like Conroe but with AGP, though I don't think this will be possible.

norman-ramsey · **Posted:** Mon May 15, 2006 5:01 pm

I too can't find this board in stock anywhere in the US. An earlier poster mentioned zipzoomfly, but they are out too. Does anybody know what's up? Has the card been withdrawn?

Gigabyte GV-N66256DP Fanless Graphics Card

Who is online