Albatron
We also have a single card from Albatron, the Albatron NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT. This card comes with a core clock of 400MHz, 50MHz higher than stock, and an 800MHz memory clock, like the Gigabyte 7300 GT.
The Albatron 7300 GT almost looks as though the design was inspired partly by the silent ASUS 7800 GT and 6600 GT. The face of the card has a metal heat sink with vertical ridges on it, and extending from the top of the card is an arm with lots of added metal plates that at first glance looks like it might be able to swing out ASUS style. The arm is fixed in place however, and the extra bit of heat sink adds about an inch an a half to the length of the card. The metal plates on the extended part of the heat sink are very thin and because they stick out a good bit from the rest of the card they can be damaged easily.
Sparkle
Sparkle provided us with a card that is somewhat unique compared to our other silent solutions in this review. We have a single Sparkle card, the NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GS Ultra 2, and it happens to be the smallest card of the group. The 7300 GS Ultra 2 looks almost as if someone took a notebook NVIDIA 7200 card and put a desktop style heat sink on it that wraps from the front around to the back. Interestingly, the Sparkle 7300 GS Ultra 2 is clocked lower than the other 7300 GS cards, with a core clock of 550 MHz, and a memory clock of 532 MHz. The combination of the 7300 GS chipset with slower memory proves to be one of the slowest in the group, although for tasks that don't require a lot from the GPU it will still work. It's also capable of functioning as a half-height card if you remove the VGA connection and replace the rear mounting bracket.
MSI
Lastly, we have two cards from MSI, the NVIDIA GeForce NX7600 GS, and the NVIDIA GeForce NX7300 GT. The two cards have a similar heat sink design, with the MSI logo in flamboyant gothic chrome lettering on top of a black heat sink.
Both MSI cards are clocked at reference speeds, 400MHz and 800/MHz for the 7600 GS, and 350MHz and 667MHz for the 7300 GT. We aren't sure if the Gothic lettering on the heat sinks adds in some way to the cooling of the card, but there isn't much doubt that these cards have the most artistic logo on them out of the rest in our review. The two cards appear virtually identical, with the exception of display connections: the 7300 GT has one DVI and one VGA port while the 7600 GS offers two DVI ports.
We also have a single card from Albatron, the Albatron NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT. This card comes with a core clock of 400MHz, 50MHz higher than stock, and an 800MHz memory clock, like the Gigabyte 7300 GT.
The Albatron 7300 GT almost looks as though the design was inspired partly by the silent ASUS 7800 GT and 6600 GT. The face of the card has a metal heat sink with vertical ridges on it, and extending from the top of the card is an arm with lots of added metal plates that at first glance looks like it might be able to swing out ASUS style. The arm is fixed in place however, and the extra bit of heat sink adds about an inch an a half to the length of the card. The metal plates on the extended part of the heat sink are very thin and because they stick out a good bit from the rest of the card they can be damaged easily.
Sparkle
Sparkle provided us with a card that is somewhat unique compared to our other silent solutions in this review. We have a single Sparkle card, the NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GS Ultra 2, and it happens to be the smallest card of the group. The 7300 GS Ultra 2 looks almost as if someone took a notebook NVIDIA 7200 card and put a desktop style heat sink on it that wraps from the front around to the back. Interestingly, the Sparkle 7300 GS Ultra 2 is clocked lower than the other 7300 GS cards, with a core clock of 550 MHz, and a memory clock of 532 MHz. The combination of the 7300 GS chipset with slower memory proves to be one of the slowest in the group, although for tasks that don't require a lot from the GPU it will still work. It's also capable of functioning as a half-height card if you remove the VGA connection and replace the rear mounting bracket.
MSI
Lastly, we have two cards from MSI, the NVIDIA GeForce NX7600 GS, and the NVIDIA GeForce NX7300 GT. The two cards have a similar heat sink design, with the MSI logo in flamboyant gothic chrome lettering on top of a black heat sink.
Both MSI cards are clocked at reference speeds, 400MHz and 800/MHz for the 7600 GS, and 350MHz and 667MHz for the 7300 GT. We aren't sure if the Gothic lettering on the heat sinks adds in some way to the cooling of the card, but there isn't much doubt that these cards have the most artistic logo on them out of the rest in our review. The two cards appear virtually identical, with the exception of display connections: the 7300 GT has one DVI and one VGA port while the 7600 GS offers two DVI ports.
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imaheadcase - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
I guess to each his own, i play bf2 on a 19inch CRT monitor at 1024x768. But even if i had a better card i would still prefer lower rez.DerekWilson - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
it's an issue of how games work on the inside ...all the objects, shapes, characters, and landscapes are there no matter how you see them. everything is mathematically represented in the software. rendered onto your display is a viewport into the world. this viewport only allows you to see a fixed grid of colors. the color of each pixel is determined by a bunch of factors, but the largest contribution is made by the object that projects onto a particular pixel.
... on second thought, this is too hard for me to explain with out a lot of math. lets look at it another way.
when there's a naked person on tv, they decrease the resolution of the area over the persons naughty bits. this makes it harder to see what's really there because there is a smaller number of large pixels that can only represent one color each. it follows, then, that it would also be harder to shoot the person acurately in said bits.
I think your preference may be based on your experience with performance at higher resolutions. Responsiveness is necessary for a quality experience in games like bf2. If you get a faster card, I would encourage you to at least try a higher resolution.
blckgrffn - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
When it is in stock at newegg, its ~$90, not nearly $140.Nat
mostlyprudent - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
I would be interested to know how much noise (quantitatively) an actively cooled 7600GS or 7600GT contributes to a system built in a relatively quiet case like an Antec P150. I am familiar with some of the leaf blowers attached to the higher end cards, but wonder how much overall system noise savings you'ld get in the mid-range cards.wilburpan - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
One obvious use for silent video cards would be in an HTPC system, where quiet performance would be a priority. Can't have those noisy computer fans intrude on watching Snakes on a Plane, you know. :@) Anyway, it would have been nice to include some video playback benchmarks to see how these cards can handle playing back a 1080p HDTV signal, or similiar tests.ViRGE - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
Since HDTV is MPEG2, any modern video card should be able to handle a 1080P signal(since this is an either/or case, it either can or can't). The limitations come in to H.264, where the video decode engine may not be clocked high enough to do higher resolution decoding. Unfortunately, I'm not sure there's any 1080 commerical/usable content that would work with Cyberlink/Intervideo's H.264 decoders(the only ones with GPU acceleration), since Quicktime content doesn't work in those.DerekWilson - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
with nvidia, the video decode engine is clocked off the core -- it actually will run better on a card with fewer pipelines and a higher core speed ... iow, the 7600gt is a better video decode graphics card than a 7900gt at default clock speeds.a little counter intuitive, but there it is.
nvidia 7 series parts with a core clock of >450 MHz should have no problem accelerating 1080p decode on players that support purevideo.
MontagGG - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
Which of these have HDCP?DerekWilson - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
to my knowledge, none of the cards tested here support hdcp. but I will certainly try to confirm this ...