Specifications

All the video cards match their reference clock speeds except for the e-VGA products which come overclocked out of the box.

	Build Process	Core Clock	Memory Speed	Onboard Memory	Memory Bus	Pixel/Vertex Pipelines
Asus X1300 Pro Silent	90nm	600Mhz	800Mhz	256Mb GDDR2	128 bit	4/2
Asus X1600 XT Silent	90nm	590Mhz	1380Mhz	256Mb GDDR3	128 bit	12/5
Powercolor X800GTO	90nm	400Mhz	700Mhz	128Mb GDDR3	256 bit	12/6
Sparkle 6600GT	110nm	500Mhz	1000Mhz	128Mb GDDR3	128 bit	8/3
Club 3D X1800 GTO	90nm	500Mhz	1000Mhz	256Mb GDDR3	256 bit	12/8
nVidia Reference 7600GT	90nm	560Mhz	1400Mhz	256Mb GDDR3	128 bit	12/5
eVGA 7600GT CO	90nm	580Mhz	1500Mhz	256Mb GDDR3	128 bit	12/5
eVGA 7600GT CO SC	90nm	600Mhz	1560Mhz	256Mb GDDR3	128 bit	12/5

Features / In the Box

In the table below you can easily see what card has what video in/out features, if it requires extra power connector, what games/software you get inside the box, and also how loud the stock cooler is at different speeds (if supported). The noise was recorded at a 45° angle from the rear of the card at ~30cm, graphics card is installed on an open test bench, the ambient noise in the room was ~37dBA.

	DVI/VGA?	Video-Out?	Video-In?	External Power?	Noise@30cm	Included Software
Asus X1300 Pro Silent	1xDVI/1xVGA	S-Video Composite	No	No	passive cooling	King Kong SE
Asus X1600 XT Silent	1xDVI/1xVGA	S-Video Composite	S-Video Composite	No	passive cooling	Savage Xpand Rally BillyBlade Mashed
Powercolor X800GTO	1xDVI/1xVGA	S-Video Composite	No	No	50.6dBA	PowerDVD
Sparkle 6600GT	1xDVI/1xVGA	S-Video Composite	No	No	50.7dBA
Club 3D X1800 GTO	2xDVI	S-Video Composite	S-Video Composite	6-Pin	H: 60.7dBA M: 49dBA L: 41.5dBA	Cyberlink Powerpack Colin McRae 2005 WWF Panda Game
eVGA 7600GT CO	2xDVI	S-Video Composite	No	No	H: 58.2dBA L: 46.5dBA
eVGA 7600GT CO SC	2xDVI	S-Video Composite	No	No	H: 60.8dBA L: 46.9dBA

$100-120 Gets you this:

Asus X1300 Pro Silent



The ATI X1300 Pro is quite low end, however that doesn’t mean it’s no good, the Asus SILENT version is ideal for the home theater PC, complete with passive cooling by use of heat pipes and a nifty swing open heatsink:



The Asus X1300 Pro Silent comes with the bare essentials, a DVI to D-Sub connector and an S-Video to Composite cable.



Installed the backside of the heatsink clips open and sits quite close to the CPU socket area

Powercolor X800GTO



This card from Powercolor is based on the X800 series GPU from ATI which is last generation tech, the GTO has less pipelines and slower clock speeds but is also considerably less pricey, fitting into the low-end range.

In the box you find a DVI->VGA connector, drivers CD and Cyberlink software to view/create/author DVDs. The card doesn’t feature GPU monitor support, and the fan speed is fixed at full speed at all times, so it’s not the most silent solution out there.

Sparkle 6600GT

I bought this card from eBay, two of them in fact, for an interesting price, new these 6600GT based nVidia cards can be found for ~€100. It’s a last generation mid-range product which has now come down in price to fit to low-range category.

The Sparkle 6600GT is based of the reference design from nVidia, using the reference cooler, which seems to run at full speed at all times too, whether in 2D mode or 3D.




Let’s take a closer look at the mid-range products in this roundup ->