Test Setup
We felt it best to include as many games as possible for our performance tests in order to get the best view of how these cards perform on both newer games and ones that have been around for a while. The games we used for our tests are Oblivion, Battlefield 2, Half-Life 2 Episode 1, Quake 4, Rise of Legends, Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, and F.E.A.R. When possible, we ran the benchmarks at four resolutions, 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, and 1600x1200. F.E.A.R doesn't support 1280x1024, so we used 1280x960 instead, and Rise of Legends doesn't support resolutions lower than 1024x768.
Because some of these cards have only 128 MBs of memory, we ran tests at lower quality settings in each of the games for these cards, but we'll deal with these cards in the following "Lower Range Performance" section. We generally test with higher quality settings enabled because we find many gamers prefer to play games with graphics quality settings on high with "bells-and-whistles" like HDR effects, sacrificing their screen resolution to make up for the performance hit (especially given that a large number of gamers still use older monitors that can only display resolutions of up to 1280x1024 or 1600x1200). This isn't the case for all gamers, and many prefer higher resolutions and lower quality graphical settings; but for the purposes of this article we find this to be the best choice for testing.
Something to note is that many of these cards are clocked at the same reference speeds, so we will see several cards with identical numbers in our tests. Because we are dealing with so many cards, comparing performance between them all is somewhat daunting, but we hope to give the reader a good idea of how these cards rank in performance relative to each other for each of the games in the next sections.
This is the system we used for testing:
*Note that sound was disabled for testing. Testing was also performed in an open air environment rather than inside a case. This eliminated the need for a case fan, but it is not fully representative of how the various cards will run once placed inside a typical case. We will have a future article examining how the various silent cards perform inside a case, and depending on the case and cooling used overall temperatures may be lower or higher. As we stated in the introduction, we would advice some caution for those looking to build a fully silent computer. It is likely easier, cheaper, and more reliable to build a nearly-silent system by using a single low-RPM 120mm fan (perhaps with a voltage mod to further reduce fan speed) than to have an absolutely silent system that overheats under load.
We felt it best to include as many games as possible for our performance tests in order to get the best view of how these cards perform on both newer games and ones that have been around for a while. The games we used for our tests are Oblivion, Battlefield 2, Half-Life 2 Episode 1, Quake 4, Rise of Legends, Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, and F.E.A.R. When possible, we ran the benchmarks at four resolutions, 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, and 1600x1200. F.E.A.R doesn't support 1280x1024, so we used 1280x960 instead, and Rise of Legends doesn't support resolutions lower than 1024x768.
Because some of these cards have only 128 MBs of memory, we ran tests at lower quality settings in each of the games for these cards, but we'll deal with these cards in the following "Lower Range Performance" section. We generally test with higher quality settings enabled because we find many gamers prefer to play games with graphics quality settings on high with "bells-and-whistles" like HDR effects, sacrificing their screen resolution to make up for the performance hit (especially given that a large number of gamers still use older monitors that can only display resolutions of up to 1280x1024 or 1600x1200). This isn't the case for all gamers, and many prefer higher resolutions and lower quality graphical settings; but for the purposes of this article we find this to be the best choice for testing.
Something to note is that many of these cards are clocked at the same reference speeds, so we will see several cards with identical numbers in our tests. Because we are dealing with so many cards, comparing performance between them all is somewhat daunting, but we hope to give the reader a good idea of how these cards rank in performance relative to each other for each of the games in the next sections.
This is the system we used for testing:
| Test Bed Components | |
| Motherboard: | NVIDIA nForce4 |
| Processor: | AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 2.6 GHz |
| Memory: | 2x1024MB OCZ 2-2-2-6 DDR-400 |
| Hard Drive: | Seagate 7200.7 120GB |
| Power Supply: | OCZ 600W PowerStream |
*Note that sound was disabled for testing. Testing was also performed in an open air environment rather than inside a case. This eliminated the need for a case fan, but it is not fully representative of how the various cards will run once placed inside a typical case. We will have a future article examining how the various silent cards perform inside a case, and depending on the case and cooling used overall temperatures may be lower or higher. As we stated in the introduction, we would advice some caution for those looking to build a fully silent computer. It is likely easier, cheaper, and more reliable to build a nearly-silent system by using a single low-RPM 120mm fan (perhaps with a voltage mod to further reduce fan speed) than to have an absolutely silent system that overheats under load.
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TheInternal - Tuesday, September 12, 2006 - link
It's wonderful to see Anandtech take the time to review silent products. I've really been trying to quiet down my PC, and seeing this review gave me some further encouragement. With rumors of ASUS acquiring XFX, it will be interesting to see if Anandtech decides to review the passively colled XFX 7950 GT with heat pipes that look awfully reminescent of the ones from the ASUS 7800 you reviewed.I'm also curious to see if any 7900 GS cards become available with passive cooling soon.
Richey02hg - Tuesday, September 5, 2006 - link
I was just curious if any of these cards are AGP? or they all PCI Express only? and also, its hard to tell since an x800xt all in one wonder isnt in there. But would any of these be an upgrade over that? Because I have to admit, just seeing that word "silent" makes me happy cause my GPU is insanely loudJarredWalton - Wednesday, September 6, 2006 - link
All are PCIe. I'm not sure if there are any silent AGP cards out there other than very low end components. As for the X800 XT, that is roughly equivalent to the 7800 GS in performance, albeit without SM 3.0 support. 7600 GT would also be pretty similar in performance I think. I would recommend holding onto your current system as long as you can, and when he can no longer stand the performance it offers do a wholesale upgrade to PCI-E GPU and motherboard, and probably a new CPU and RAM is well. At that point, you might as well just go ahead and buy a completely new system -- you could even try selling off your current system to recoup some of the cost.Richey02hg - Thursday, September 7, 2006 - link
thanks for the advice, Im actually planning to get a laptop in 2006 and thanks to your review im definetly waiting for that second wave (forget the name) of the core 2 duos for laptops :)Eddie Lin - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
Gigabyte seems don't need reserve SLI bridge seems 7300GS only go with S/W SLI and don't need bridge. Is really good heatsink design on this cardDerekWilson - Friday, September 1, 2006 - link
Thanks Eddie --We have added this information to the article.
yacoub - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
It's an absolute joke that Asus and Gigabyte don't have silently-cooled 7900GTs out yet. The card requires less power and runs cooler than the 7800GT did. It's a shoe-in to get a silent version. wtf.This is practically a roundup of grandfathers and retirees when you include a 7800GT. ;P
nullpointerus - Friday, September 1, 2006 - link
Maybe they are trying to get rid of old cards without dropping the price too much?yyrkoon - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
Alot of people that would consider buying a fanless GPU wouldnt even care if it DID make tons of noise, some of us live in deserts, where its extremely dusty. There is nothing like owning an air compressor or two, just for 'dusting' you house, shops, and PC / electronics innards.I guess I'm one of the few people who actually enjoy having a fan or two on while I'm sleeping for background noise, but less moving parts means longer part life here in the Nevada desert. However, I own a eVGA 7600GT KO, that has a fan on it, and you know what, I have a really hard time hearing it from 6 feet away. In fact, the 120mm low RPM fans that came with my Lian Li case make more noise, and they dont make much noise themselves.
I think its a great idea that these manufactuers are making products like this, but at the same time, for me personally its not really an option. I only buy parts from a compnay with a good reputation, and offer excellent customer support, and hence I'm very picky about who I buy from. At the same time, I know what I want, and if something passive isnt availible on say a 7600GT (which is what I wanted for this current system), and at the same time, from a company I would normally buy parts from, then I wont bother. I would think it a better option to buy the part you wanted for a video card, then buy an aftermarket passive cooler if it comes down to that (which would probably void your warranty, so again, for some of us, not really an option).
So basicly, what it boils down to, is that I have to buy a graphics card with a fan to get what I want, and if problems later ensue, its a good thing I have a can of miracle oil around, and a few saringes . . .
Josh Venning - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
These are some good points; it's true that with less moving parts you would theoretically see longer life and resistence to dust and dirt, something that could be a plus. And while it's true that a normal graphics card (with a fan on it) will be pretty hard to hear from a little ways away inside your computer case, the idea is that some people need that extra bit of silence for whatever reason, and every extra fan adds to the noise level on the system. For myself, when recording sound/music with a computer, getting things as quiet as possible is very important, so this is one case where eliminating even a couple of dbs is worth buying a silent gpu for. (especially if, like myself, your recording computer is one you also want to be able to play games on.)