The new passive king: Gainward BLISS 7600GT SilentFX

bean1975 · Post by **bean1975** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 4:57 pm

I would like to draw attention to this card. There is some confusion around it, but after some digging I figured it out. I am pretty sure this is the fastest totally passive (ie. non heatpipe) card around -- before that, I only saw 7600GS from Asus and XFX.

See http://www.gainward.de/media/files/Spec ... asheet.pdf

You can barely see that it has two slot covers. We will have a better picture...

The confusion comes from the fact that there is a Golden Sample variety which uses higher clocks and a heat pipe cooler but a) it does not appear on gainward site any more, the PDF is in the "Archived Products" section b) shops sometimes mix up the two cards.

http://www.gainward.de/media/files/Spec ... asheet.pdf

A third problem is that USA does not seem to have this, a little Googling finds you shops in Germany, England, France etc and Australia but not the United States.

This card was at CeBIT 2007 http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/vi ... id=18&pg=4 so the card is rather new. You can see a photo from an angle -- that Artic Cooling designed heatsink is of some serious size -- occupies a free slot:

Artic Cooling produced similar sinks in the past for other partners as well http://www.arctic-cooling.com/vgapartners1.php and http://www.arctic-cooling.com/vgapartners2.php?idx=97 this page specifically is interesting as it explains how it works.

cyberspyder · Post by **cyberspyder** » Sun Apr 15, 2007 8:54 am

Nope, not the fastest. xFx has a Fatal1ty 7600GT card that is passive, but with heatpipes. Dunno why you'd want to point out the fastest non-heatpipe card, as passive simply means 'no-moving parts'.

Brendan

[F]bernZ · Post by **[F]bernZ** » Sun Apr 15, 2007 9:19 am

Not to mention Gigabyte's 8600GTS passive will be launched on the 17th.

dhanson865 · Post by **dhanson865** » Sun Apr 15, 2007 9:53 am

cyberspyder wrote:Nope, not the fastest. xFx has a Fatal1ty 7600GT card that is passive, but with heatpipes. Dunno why you'd want to point out the fastest non-heatpipe card, as passive simply means 'no-moving parts'.

Brendan

It does seem odd to use the term passive and exclude heat pipes but it could be a useful dividing line.

What it implies but doesn't necessarily mean is that the non heat pipe card has lower power draw.

So the question is what is the power draw of this card? How about performance per watt?

kater · Post by **kater** » Sun Apr 15, 2007 10:51 am

Until we see 8xxx cards with fanless heatsinks, this is the fastest one with stock cooler:

XXX 7950GT

Yeah, I know it has heatpipes, but it's still totally passive, isn't it? Why would you not take heatpipes into account when talking about fanless cooling solutions?

puscifer · Post by **puscifer** » Sun Apr 15, 2007 12:30 pm

It's exactly the same cooler as XFX 7600 GT Fatal1ty. Hope Gigabyte 8600GTS doesn't get much higher than 250$ although i hope the new Zalman VNF100 fits on a 8600GT(S).

lemmy · Post by **lemmy** » Mon Apr 16, 2007 6:32 pm

WOW...blue heatpipe is a beast.

Fungi · Post by **Fungi** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 4:50 pm

It looks like a trimmed down HR-03, though.

ryboto · Post by **ryboto** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 6:56 pm

kater wrote:Until we see 8xxx cards with fanless heatsinks, this is the fastest one with stock cooler:

XXX 7950GT

Yeah, I know it has heatpipes, but it's still totally passive, isn't it? Why would you not take heatpipes into account when talking about fanless cooling solutions?

so, the 7950GT performs a little better than a X1950pro, but costs a little more too. X1950pro is a pretty inexpensive card now, and considering that it can be cooled passively, both by 3rd party coolers and stock accelero S2's, it's pretty decent..for dx9 at least.

splinter6 · Post by **splinter6** » Sun Apr 22, 2007 5:11 pm

I signed up to this forum after searching for this card. As of today I just received this card after purchasing on ebay. I run the gainward 7600GT SFX on a system with only a 250w power supply and it ran perfectly fine in elder scrolls oblivion. The max temperature recorded was only 51 degrees celcius too.

bean1975 · Post by **bean1975** » Sat May 12, 2007 5:42 am

splinter6 wrote:I signed up to this forum after searching for this card. As of today I just received this card after purchasing on ebay. I run the gainward 7600GT SFX on a system with only a 250w power supply and it ran perfectly fine in elder scrolls oblivion. The max temperature recorded was only 51 degrees celcius too.

Wow! I am very interested, please tell us more. For example can you measure somehow the power draw of the card? Compare it to another card, for example?

Redzo · Post by **Redzo** » Sat May 12, 2007 6:32 am

I would NOT buy 7600GT now, its old and there are so much better cards around the corner. 8600GTS and GT and not to mention 8500. These cards have much lower power needs and are able to fully accelerate HD. Something that can't be said for 7600GT.... And BTW passive card means "no moving parts that make noise" don't see how heatpipes would not fit in there ??

NyteOwl · Post by **NyteOwl** » Sat May 12, 2007 1:57 pm

I would NOT buy 7600GT now, its old and there are so much better cards around the corner. 8600GTS and GT and not to mention 8500. These cards have much lower power needs and are able to fully accelerate HD. Something that can't be said for 7600GT.... And BTW passive card means "no moving parts that make noise" don't see how heatpipes would not fit in there ??

The thing with technology is that there re ALWAYS better products around the corner. If you always wait for the "better product that's coming" you'll be waiting forever and never get anything. It's a matter of what suits your needs and time frame and is available.

I suppose one could consider the capillary movement of refrigerant a moving part but I think that would be seriously stretching the term passive. To me passive means no mechanically moving parts

Now one can argue wherther a peltier is passive as it has an active electronic component

Mr Evil · Post by **Mr Evil** » Sat May 12, 2007 2:19 pm

Just to clarify the definition of passive: Being passive means to do nothing, merely accepting what is done to you. In engineering it more specifically means something that adds no energy to the system - for instance a fan is active (i.e. not passive) because it uses electrical energy. A heatpipe is passive because it only uses the energy that is already in the system (heat from the GPU). Passive does not necessarily mean no moving parts.

Redzo · Post by **Redzo** » Sat May 12, 2007 2:44 pm

NyteOwl wrote:
I would NOT buy 7600GT now, its old and there are so much better cards around the corner. 8600GTS and GT and not to mention 8500. These cards have much lower power needs and are able to fully accelerate HD. Something that can't be said for 7600GT.... And BTW passive card means "no moving parts that make noise" don't see how heatpipes would not fit in there ??
The thing with technology is that there re ALWAYS better products around the corner. If you always wait for the "better product that's coming" you'll be waiting forever and never get anything. It's a matter of what suits your needs and time frame and is available.

Yeah, well I would agree with you if cards that I was recomending were 1-2 or more months away but these cards 8600GT/S and 8500GT are here NOW and thay ARE PASSIVE! So I wanted to show to bean1975 that 7600GT is OLD news, infact very, very old news. So why go with older product ?? Please enlighten me.....

I suppose one could consider the capillary movement of refrigerant a moving part but I think that would be seriously stretching the term passive. To me passive means no mechanically moving parts Now one can argue wherther a peltier is passive as it has an active electronic component

Well its safe to say that in this forum we consider passive something that does not make noise...if it moves or not I simply dont care. I just dont like noise, have no problem with "movements".

NyteOwl · Post by **NyteOwl** » Sat May 12, 2007 2:55 pm

Yeah, well I would agree with you if cards that I was recomending were 1-2 or more months away but these cards 8600GT/S and 8500GT are here NOW and thay ARE PASSIVE! So I wanted to show to bean1975 that 7600GT is OLD news, infact very, very old news. So why go with older product ?? Please enlighten me.....

Your original post said "around the corner". That to everyone I've ever taked to means "soming soon" not "available now". WHy go with an older product? dpending on circumstances it could be quieter, cooler, smaller, have a particular feature, have an available driver or signigficantly cheaper for the intended use - any number of reasons depending on your needs.

Well its safe to say that in this forum we consider passive something that does not make noise...if it moves or not I simply dont care. I just dont like noise, have no problem with "movements".

Actually I don't think it's safe to say that the "forum definiton" of passive is silent. A Ninja with no fans is passive, a ninja with fan is not, though it may for practical purposes be virtually silent. I rather doubt any of us like noisy systems or we wouldn't be spending time with this site and forum

splinter6 · Post by **splinter6** » Mon May 14, 2007 5:24 pm

Why did I go with this card? Because the 8600 was $100 more and wasnt being released for another month in my country when I purchased the gainward 7600 silentfx and a needed a decent value for money card urgently. Also It wouldnt be worth getting a geforce 8 series card for me as I dont have the best system out or even a psu that can handle it. If I were to get a geforce 8 series, It would only be a 8800.

For the other guy who asked about the power consumption, I have no way of measuring this cards power consumption.

qviri · Post by **qviri** » Mon May 14, 2007 5:34 pm

Redzo wrote:these cards 8600GT/S and 8500GT are here NOW and thay ARE PASSIVE! So I wanted to show to bean1975 that 7600GT is OLD news, infact very, very old news. So why go with older product ?? Please enlighten me.....

It is Cheaperâ„¢. That should be reason enough.