Gigabyte has a lot of experience in the silent graphics market, and we have several ATI and NVIDIA cards from them for this review. An interesting statistic is that 90% of Gigabyte's shipped graphics solutions are silent, which makes a statement about the desirability of silent cards. Gigabyte is well represented in this review, having provided us with the highest number of solutions for testing. While their cards may not win any awards for good looks (the gold and turquoise coloring and unique heat sink designs aren't very easy on the eyes), they apparently handle silent operation very well, even at higher-than-stock clock speeds.
On the NVIDIA side, we have the Gigabyte 7600 GT, 7600 GS, 7300 GT, and 7300 GS. The Gigabyte 7600 GS comes shipped with its core overclocked to 450MHz, slightly higher (by 50MHz) than the stock version of this card. The Gigabyte 7300 GT also has a factory overclock of 450MHz core clock as opposed to the standard 350MHz core clock and an 800MHz memory clock verses the standard 667MHz memory clock on the 7300 GT. On the ATI side, we have the Gigabyte X1600 XT, X1600 Pro, X1300 Pro and X1300. All other Gigabyte cards aside from the 7600 GS and 7300 GT are clocked at reference speeds.
As we can see, the Gigabyte NVIDIA 7600 GT, ATI X1600 XT, and ATI X1600 Pro all have almost identical heat sink designs. The heat sinks are unique, with a bulky sink up front towards the DVI connections and heatpipes connecting to other heat sinks on the front and back of the card. The Gigabyte cards with this style heat sink are much more bulky than the other ones, and it's important to note that the silver heat sink uses up a second slot making these dual-slot solutions.
The Gigabyte X1300 Pro looks almost the same as the previous three Gigabyte cards; however, it is missing the extra heat sink on the back and the second metal pipe that would extend to it. The silver heat sink on the front still takes up an extra slot however, which is a point against this and the other three cards.
The Gigabyte 7600 GS and 7300 GT are very similar in appearance. The heat sinks on these cards are much more compact than those on the first four cards we mentioned. These cards don't take up an extra slot and only have a gold heat sink on the front, with a strange looking heatpipe running out and back in a "U" shape from the main heat sink. The heatpipe is attached to thin metal sheets, all in the name of increasing surface area and removing heat from the hotter portions of the card. These thin metal sheets seem a little delicate and might bend if the card is mishandled, though a slightly bent heat sink fin isn't really a major problem.
The Gigabyte 7300 GS and X1300 have heat sinks with a unique type of gold cover or hood running along the top part of the cards, over a silver heat sink on the cards' processor. The Gigabyte 7300 GS doesn't have a bridge connector on the top of the card for SLI operation, but it will still run in SLI (with a second card) without the bridge connection.
Gigabyte seems to have a definite plan about their custom heat sink designs, and after testing and overclocking these cards, there isn't much doubt that they perform well. They did, however, tend to get very hot to the touch after repeated testing, to the point where they became difficult to hold. We'll talk more about how well these cards overclocked in the "Overclocking" section.
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