Up Close & Personal, Looking at Details

Having gone through the first impressions of the GeForce 8800 GTS accelerator, it is time to check a bit deeper and reveal the real nature of the Gainward BLISS 8800 GTS graphics card. We will actually take a closer look and highlight some of the vital features. We will start with the front and move slowly to the underlying components. As we already mentioned the Gainward version is in fact a reference design, which is actually a requirement from NVIDIA with the first versions. No pre-overclocked designs could be made the first months, and only since some weeks NVIDIA has lifted that constraint. Once again NVIDIA came up with a new cooling design to keep the card cool and quiet while running the newest game titles.

The Gainward BLISS 8800 GTS edition features the standard cooling solution designed by NVIDIA. The only minor difference that Gainward has applied with the retail package is to replace the NVIDIA sticker on top of the cooling fan by their own logo. The fan used on the GTS series isn't the same as we saw on the previous GeForce 7900 GT and GTX series cards, instead NVIDIA opted to come up with a new design with a larger heatsink and density and thus able to provide a somehow quiet cooling solution. This certainly is some good news and shows that NVIDIA is trying to keep their card cool and silent at the time.

We couldn't just leave without some images with the focus on the fan itself. It has a decent amount of fins which add up in the air flow it can generate. The black fan will definitely please the overclockers amongst us as it is of high quality and can push a decent amount of air through its fan blades. On top of that the complete cooler is semi transparent and following the design ethics generally applied by NVIDIA. What might not be that clear is that this is still a heatpipe design, which works very well. Certainly it isn't the first time that NVIDIA used the heatpipe technology to cool their high-end graphics cards, as it was very successfully used on their GeForce 7900 GTX accelerator.

The new heatsink design looks awesome as a whole and does look quite more impressive than the cooling solution used on the GeForce 7900 series. Next to the fan intake you will find the NVIDIA logo surfacing on the fan itself, while the remaining of the cooler is left bank initially. The cooler is bigger than we are used to from NVIDIA but it does have its advantages over the cooling solution used previously and needs to be more effective due to the G80 chip being quite big to fit the new architecture and technology. Next to that this also means that there is enough room for each brand to stick their own markings on the GeForce 8800 GTS cooling.

The cooling system of the GeForce 8800 GTS is actually a blower pumping air from inside the PC case and into the thin-ribbed aluminum heatsink with a massive sole and is then exhausting it to the outside. This is quite efficient and has been used adequately by most of the Arctic Cooling heatsinks. This technique also makes use of a lager blower which will run slower though can move more air and reduce the noise tremendously. This alone is already an outstanding feature and does seem the way to go for a silent, though high performing cooling solution.

The cooling solution is designed quite simply. The aluminum sole that has direct contact with the GPU transfers its heat to a heatpipe which is passing the heat over to the set of thin aluminum ribs on the left of the fan; the ribs are covered with a profiled case. The hot air is exhausted outside, which helps the overall cooling efficiency. The cooling system is manufactured well. The aluminum ribs are pressed tightly to the heatpipe to ensure proper thermal contact. Both sections of the heatsink are heating up during work, indicating good heat transfer.