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ASUS EAX1600 XT Silent

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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ASUS EAX1600 XT Silent - The ASUS EAX1600 XT Silent 256 MB video card is here, and has quite an appealing price tag with a very full bundle. It speaks softly, but does it carry a big stick?

You can purchase the ASUS EAX1600 XT Silent video card for $148.99, and the NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT can be had for $132.99 and up. The $16 USD price difference isn't huge, and is easily accounted for with the excellent bundle that the ASUS video card offers. It comes with four full-version games and a nice VIVO dongle. However, the performance just isn't there to provide an oustanding gaming experience, which makes this video card difficult to recommend, especially when a cheaper video card can do more.
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Nice review!. But how warm did the card get at idle speeds vs under 3D mode?
 
Idle temperature was 104.5 degrees fahrenheit, or 40.3 degrees celcius.
Load temperature peaked at 118 degrees fahrenheit, or 47.8 degrees celcius.
 
I sometimes don't think the target you think the card should hit and the target the vendor is aiming for is the same thing. I am currently looking at getting a HTPC that will drive 1080P and do it as silently as possible. You even brushed on the topic of AVIVO, but went on to only gaming bench marks.

While ANOTHER exhuastive article on High Definition video output is not needed, it would be nice to see a concesion in the conclusion that this card may be also aimed at an HTPC crowd. That would let people know that this is at least a dual purposed card that is or is not stellar in it's performance as a HTPC component.
 
This is a great card.

Amazing it can run games so well and without a fan! Great for a silent PC solution. I put a Zalman on it and it overclocks decently as well.
 
You mean like this (in the second to last paragraph on the conclusion page):

Potential HTPC users and gamers that like the quiet life may find that to be a compelling reason to take a longer look at this video card.
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maybe users w/17 monitors will appreciate something like this. Still, I guess with the 7600 being cheaper, there's nothing stopping one from buying that...unless of course--silence is essence. Too bad, this card looks real cool.
 
First thing I thought - this would be perfect for a HTPC, any benchmarks there? ;)

Thanks for the review.. I think this may be my HTPC card unless I can find a better card performance-wise, silence still taken into consideration.
 
Good review, thank you. I had hoped it's performance would have been better, but I'm glad to see something that acknowledges the value of of quiet. Hopefully this trend will continue.

It seems to be worth it to pay a little extra for a card that is quiet, but I wonder if it would be possible to take a less expensive card and come up with aftermarket fanless cooling, ending up with a card that performs better for less. Thoughts?
 
The Arctic Cooling Accelero S-series is a series of fanless designs starting with the 7900GT, adding cards as the series moves along. It is supposed to be available "starting October 2006", but I personally haven't seen anything yet.

Also, Thermalright recently announced/released a fanless GPU cooling device, the HR-03, but I, for one, haven't seen it for sale yet.

Either of those two products, given each manufacturer's history of quality cooling devices, will probably be sufficient to power each product's targeted GPU or GPU range.
 
Ok fans on 3d cards do tend to be loud but I still have to wonder what and how many fans are going to be needed to get the heat this thing dumps into the case out and what it would cook in a SFF case.

The NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT is readily available at a lower price, is more powerful, and provides a better gaming experience. Only those for whom silent operation is a supreme requirement should be interested in the ASUS EAX1600 XT Silent video card.
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Honest, its why I hang here. :cool:
 
I was disappointed you chose to compare a fanless card with a standard card: it really doesn't make sense to do so. Obviously you're buying silence, and silence has it's cost in performance, particularly at the same price point. That's all this review concludes.

A more worthwhile comparison would have been with another fanless card, then we really would have had a head-to-head, aimed at an entirely different market and with a different set of parameters, not just the usual games performance tests.

A wasted review in my opinion (not that that counts for much....)

Regards,
 
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