Gigabyte’s GV-RX80L256V graphics card

While quieter cooling solutions have become more popular, only passive cooling can deliver the absolute silence that low-noise enthusiasts really seek. Cooling a chip without fans isn’t easy, though. Today’s denser chips and higher clock speeds present challenging thermal profiles, and in the graphics card world, passive cooling has largely been limited to low-end products.

Not content to let only budget cards bask in glorious silence, Gigabyte has brought passive cooling to ATI’s mid-range Radeon X800 XL. The GV-RX80L256V combines silent cooling with the X800 XL’s already impressive pixel-pushing power, and it comes equipped with HDTV output and VIVO for good measure. Priced at just over $300, the GV-RX80L256V could be the ultimate Radeon X800 XL, but can passive cooling handle a mid-range graphics chip running at 400MHz? Read on to find out.

The card
Apart from its cooler, the GV-RX80L256V appears to follow ATI’s Radeon X800 XL 256MB reference design closely. We’ll be focusing our attention on the specifics of Gigabyte’s implementation, but you can read more on the features and performance of the Radeon X800 XL graphics chip in our initial review.

Most Gigabyte graphics cards come on turquoise boards, and the GV-RX80L256V is no exception. The massive gold-colored heat sink is a little gaudy for my tastes, but then I’m getting old, and bling is all the rage with kids these days. Or is it ice? I can never keep up.

The GV-RX80L256V’s gargantuan cooler extends over the back of the card, but before we examine it in detail, let’s have a peek at what lies beneath.

An ATI Rage Theater chip is tucked away under the rear-mounted heat sink. This video encoder/decoder chip powers the card’s video input capabilities, but without an integrated TV tuner, the card falls just short of All-in-Wonder territory.

Gigabyte relies on a bundled output dongle for many of the GV-RX80L256V’s video ports, leaving the PCI back plate looking a little plain. The only disappointment here is the lack of dual DVI outputs. We’re over four months into 2005, and with LCD panel prices falling and even sub-$200 GeForce 6600 GTs sporting dual-DVI, a $300 graphics card like the GV-RX80L256V really should have two digital outputs.

Although it only has one DVI output, the GV-RX80L256V’s video output dongle is pretty loaded. The dongle features S-Video input and output ports, composite video input, and component HDTV output. Those with older HDTVs should particularly appreciate the latter.

On the software front, Gigabyte bundles the card with copies of PowerDVD 5, PowerDirector 3, Joint Operations, and Thief III. PowerDirector 3 is a particularly useful addition given the card’s video capture capabilities, and the game bundle isn’t half bad, either. Joint Ops and Thief III are hardly cutting-edge titles, but both are relatively recent releases.

Passive cooling
The GV-RX80L256V’s crown jewel, or rather gold chain, is its massive passive heat sink.

Split between the front and rear of the card, the cooler is actually a two-piece design. Interestingly, the front-mounted heat sink is smaller than the one at the rear. This setup puts the larger heat sink closer to most case’s rear exhaust fans, which makes a lot of sense.

The GV-RX80L256V’s front and rear heat sinks are linked by a pair of heat pipes that sit on a copper base and run directly over the GPU core.

Sandwiching the card between two coolers makes the GV-RX80L256V beefier than most. At 35mm thick, the card is just barely thinner than most dual-slot coolers.

Depending on the motherboard, the GV-RX80L256V might as well be a dual-slot design. The tall, rear-mounted heat sink can obscure access to expansion slots above a PCI Express x16 slot, as it does on the DFI NF4 Ultra-D. On that board, which is pictured above, the card blocks access to the PCI Express x4 slot. There is, however, just enough clearance for Zalman’s CNPS7000 CPU cooler.

Fortunately, the low-profile, front-mounted heat sink doesn’t block access to expansion slots located below the graphics card.

Our testing methods
All tests were run three times, and their results were averaged, using the following test system.

Today we’ll be looking at the GV-RX80L256V’s performance against that of ATI’s Radeon X800 XL 512MB and NVIDIA’s GeForce 6800 GT 256MB.

Thanks to OCZ for providing us with memory for our testing. If you’re looking to tweak out your system to the max and maybe overclock it a little, OCZ’s RAM is definitely worth considering.

Also, our test system was powered by OCZ PowerStream power supply units. The PowerStream was one of our Editor’s Choice winners in our latest PSU round-up.

We used the following versions of our test applications:

• DOOM 3 1.1 with trdelta1 and trhaze demos
• Far Cry 1.3 with tr1-volcano and tr3-pier demos
• Half-Life 2 with trboat and trtown demos
• Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory 1.02
• FutureMark 3DMark05 Build 120

The test systems’ Windows desktop was set at 1280×1024 in 32-bit color at an 85Hz screen refresh rate. Vertical refresh sync (vsync) was disabled for all tests. All of the 3D gaming tests used the highest possible detail image quality settings except where otherwise noted.

All the tests and methods we employed are publicly available and reproducible. If you have questions about our methods, hit our forums to talk with us about them.

Pixel filling power
We’ll begin with a look at the GV-RX80L256V’s theoretical peak fill rate and memory bandwidth. These metrics don’t always dictate performance in real-world applications, but they’re a good place to start.

Although it has slightly less peak memory bandwidth than the GeForce 6800 GT, the GV-RX80L256V boasts higher pixel and texel fill rates. 3DMark05’s single and multitexturing tests allow us to test these theoretical peaks in a more real world test.

Interestingly, the GV-RX80L256V comes out behind the GeForce 6800 GT in 3DMark05’s single texturing test, despite having a higher peak theoretical fill rate. The Gigabyte card pulls ahead in the multitexturing test, though.

Moving on to 3DMark05’s feature tests, the GV-RX80L256V bests the 6800 GT in both vertex shader tests, but falls a little behind in the pixel shader test.

DOOM 3
Our DOOM 3 tests used the game’s High Detail image quality setting, which enables 8X anisotropic filtering by default.

NVIDIA’s GeForce 6 series has always excelled in DOOM 3, so it’s no surprise that the GV-RX80L256V isn’t able to keep up with the 6800 GT. That said, the GV-RX80L256V is still able to average over 30 frames per second at 1600×1200 in our demanding “heat haze” demo. That’s a pretty impressive result considering we’re running with 4X antialiasing and 8X aniso.

Far Cry
We used “Very high” for all of Far Cry’s in-game quality settings, with the exception of water, which was set to “Ultra high.” In other words, everything was maxed out.

The GV-RX80L256V finds redemption in Far Cry, where it stays ahead of the GeForce 6800 GT in both demos. Frame rates at 1600×1200 with 4X antialiasing and 8X aniso continue to impress. Now you know why we didn’t bother testing with antialiasing and aniso disabled.

Half-Life 2
Half-Life 2 was tested with its in-game detail levels turned all the way up. Our benchmark demos explore indoor and outdoor areas from different parts of the game.

Although it overpowers the 6800 GT in our trtown demo, the GV-RX80L256V can’t quite sweep the NVIDIA card in our trboat demo. Note that Half-Life 2 is the first example we’ve seen where the Radeon X800 XL 512MB’s extra graphics memory improves performance.

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory is the newest addition to our graphics benchmarking suite, and it’s a looker. The game comes with a benchmark demo from the first level, which we’ve used for testing.

Chaos Theory is unique because it supports Shader Model 1.1 and 3.0, but not Shader Model 2.0 or any of its derivatives. The SM 3.0 path offers extra eye candy, including HDR lighting, tone and parallax mapping, and soft shadows, that users can enable if they choose. Since the GeForce 6800 GT runs a little faster on the SM 3.0 code path, which doesn’t look any worse than the SM 1.1 code path, we’ve used the SM 3.0 path to test the card. There’s simply no reason to artificially handicap the GT’s performance with the SM 1.1 code path. The Radeon X800 XLs were tested with the SM 1.1 code path, which is how end users will have to run the game. Any extra SM 3.0 effects were disabled for the GeForce 6800 GT.

It’s a close race, but the GV-RX80L256V just pulls out ahead of the GeForce 6800 GT at 1600×1200. Even at that resolution, there’s less than a single frame per second difference in performance.

3DMark05 game tests
Finally, we have 3DMark05’s game tests.

The GV-RX80L256V beats the GeForce 6800 GT in the second game test, but loses to the NVIDIA card in the third. Overall, the cards are evenly matched.

Noise levels
Noise levels were tested with an Extech model 407727 Digital Sound Level Meter placed 1″ from the test system. We tested noise levels on an open test bench, and we also tested with the system installed in an Antec SX830 enclosure with a single 80mm exhaust fan. Tests were conducted after 10 minutes at idle and again after another 10 minutes crunching through 3DMark05’s first game test at 1600×1200 with 4X antialiasing and 16X anisotropic filtering.

Since the GV-RX80L256V’s passive cooling is essentially silent, our noise level tests showcase the card’s impact on overall system noise levels. Our enclosed system used temperature-controlled case and processor fans, so any heat thrown off by the passive cooler’s massive heat sinks could result in higher processor and system temperatures, which could in turn increase noise levels.

Although the GV-RX80L256V is able to lower the noise levels of our open system dramatically, the card’s passive cooling doesn’t do nearly as much for our enclosed system. The potential for total silence is certainly there, but overall system noise levels will largely depend on other system components and on the enclosure’s cooling configuration.

Power consumption
We busted out our trusty watt meter to measure system power consumption, sans monitor, at the outlet. Power consumption was measured at idle and under a load generated by 3DMark05’s first game test running at 1600×1200 with 4X antialiasing and 16X aniso.

The GV-RX80L256V has the lowest power consumption of the lot, perhaps in part because the card doesn’t have to worry about powering a cooling fan.

Overclocking
We used ATI Tool to determine the GV-RX80L256V’s highest stable and artifact-free core and memory clocks. In testing, we were able to get the card’s core up to 411MHz and its memory up to 1008MHz, neither of which are significantly higher than the card’s stock speeds.

Still, the minor overclock is good for a modest performance boost in Far Cry. As is always the case with overclocking, your mileage may vary. Serious overclockers will probably want to opt for active cooling.

Conclusions
Before passing judgment on the GV-RX80L256V, we decided to subject its passive cooler to a torture test of sorts. We packed our test system into an Antec SX830 enclosure with a single 80mm exhaust fan and set it up for an eight-hour marathon of 3DMark05’s game tests at 1600×1200 with 6X antialiasing and 16X anisotropic filtering. The card completed the test without incident or visual artifacting, proving that the cooling solution holds up even over extreme and extended loads. A word of caution, though: let the card cool down for at least 10 minutes before trying to remove it from a system that’s been under that kind of load—or use oven mitts. As one might expect, the card’s passive cooler gets quite hot, and it takes a while to cool off.

The lack of bundled oven mitts aside, it’s hard to find fault with the GV-RX80L256V, especially given its $312 street price. At that price, it’s only about $10 more expensive than competing Radeon X800 XLs, and well worth the premium for low-noise systems. Even if we disregard the card’s silent cooler, the rest of the package—its VIVO capabilities, HDTV dongle, and decent software bundle—packs in plenty of value. Dual DVI output is the only feature we found lacking on the card, and while that may only be a minor issue for some, it will undoubtedly be a deal-breaker for others.

In concluding, it’s important to note that while the GV-RX80L256V is silent, it won’t necessarily silence your system. The card would certainly be a fantastic addition to a low-noise PC, but it can’t work miracles, and it alone is not going to make a relatively noisy system much quieter.