Graphics cards come in all form shapes and sizes, least of our worries is it the introduction of the dual slot form factor in the 8800GTS. With the come back later, of the single slot form fact in some mainstream graphics preferably the mid-ranged 8800GT. But the length of the physical form of the graphics card is still a hassle in installing the graphics card. With all of the memory, the core and the transistors calculating and transferring all of the graphic codes and displaying them, can be a usage problem.
As well as the heat problem, with all of the movement of data, and friction of electricity, a large amount of heat-sink configuration and an active fan is vital for these high clock cards to keep cool and stable. With silent cards like this, from Gigabyte, is really rare for it to come in a mainstream graphics a newer revision 9800GT, but with much better features that Gigabyte introduced in their products, the 3rd generation ultra durable, with an addition of 2oz. Of copper lining and better choke and capacitors, is possible to have a silent card with no fan to run in load, for reasonable temperatures.
The silent version of Gigabyte, with the NVIDIA 9800GT, is a little old for most people, who see the GTX and the GTS series graphics superseding the 9000-series, even though the GTS series is a cheat of a 9000 series, but still good overall. However the 9800GT is a NVIDIA’s choice of mainstream graphics before going dual slot in the GTS and GTX, the silent cell is a most of the past a dual slot non-fan configuration card, with a large set of find made out of aluminium and copper heat-pipes travelling all of the area of the cooler. As its core spec a 1GB full of GDDR3 memory effective frequency of 900MHz, with shader clock at 1500GHz and a usual core clock of 600MHz.
Physically the blue PCB board is filled with most chips and the latest choke and capacitors that Gigabyte has in stock, and theoretically cools 15 degrees better than the silent competition. With still a recommended six-pin external power supply, and a massive requirement of a high air flow case to keep the promises of stable card, is needed to run this in 24-7 operations.
But performance features of the Silent cell 9800GT, physX, and CUDA technologies made more of the use of NVIDIA card that the ATI counterparts. With the Folding@home being an important role in science, CUDA and NVIDIA technologies make good use of simulations in a much higher scale that ATI, which are gaming oriented cards. With 9800GT’s going to be superseded most of their products, it still goes the long distance in gaming performance in most areas before giving up in the higher end games. More importantly, the Silent Cell comfortable hit no noise level and 59 degrees at load in Farcry2, far better in most passive cooling, but having to have a good case.
This Silent Cell cards would cost you about more for the silent treatment but have to consider the possibilities of a better well-rounded case to play this card. But overall, this could be a simple media player/ mid gaming rig in some forms. Prefer GTS250 in dedicated gaming than this.