Gigabyte is familiar to most PC hardware enthusiasts. At first, they specialized only in motherboard design. In a few short years, they expanded their product lineup to include graphics cards, notebooks, communications equipment, network servers, computer chassis and cooling devices. We have two brand new Gigabyte passively cooled silent video cards to evaluate today. The Gigabyte GeForce 8600 GT features Silent-Pipe II technology and the Gigabyte GeForce 8600 GTS features Silent-Pipe III technology, so each video card uses a different silent cooling version. The question for enthusiasts out there is which is the better value for gaming and how high do they overclock? - HardOCP

Gigabyte GeForce 8600 GT & GTS Silent-Pipe Review

The GeForce 8600 GT and GTS are identical in feature set. They are both made on an 80nm process, and they both have 32 streaming processors and 8 raster operation units. Both GPU's are designed to be connected to 256MB of GDDR3 running on a 128-bit bus. As a matter of fact, the only two differences between them are clock speeds and memory frequencies. The faster version, the GeForce 8600 GTS, has a core reference speed of 675MHz, a memory reference speed of 2.0GHz effective, and a streaming processor reference speed of 1.45GHz. It is designed to draw about 71W of power during operation.

The GeForce 8600 GT is significantly slower, but also uses significantly less power. It is designed to consume 43W and comes in at 540MHz on the core, 1.4GHz effective on the memory, and 1.18GHz on the streaming processors. Because of the low power usage specification, the GeForce 8600 GT does not require the now typical 6-pin auxiliary power supply connector. Apart from the cooler, the Gigabyte GeForce 8600 GT Silent uses a reference designed PCB based on a GeForce 8600 GT GPU. The card is factory overclocked to 600MHz for the core, and the memory comes clocked at 1.44GHz effective.

The Gigabyte GeForce 8600 GTS Silent is not your standard fare NVIDIA reference PCB design at all. Gigabyte has re-designed the video card to do without an auxiliary PCI Express connector. This departs from all other GeForce 8600 GTS based video cards which do require external power. One reason this may be is due to the fact that this video card lacks a fan, since it is a fully passive cooling design. In any case this should benefit those with power constraints. The GPU is clocked at 675MHz, and the memory is clocked to 2.0GHz effective, in-line with NVIDIA's reference specifications for the frequencies.

The Gigabyte GeForce 8600 GTS Silent is a great performing passively cooled video card with a well conceived and designed passive cooling device that works well especially when overclocked. You wouldn't typically think of a passively cooled video card as being a good overclocker, but the Gigabyte GeForce 8600 GTS with Silent-Pipe III has surprised us. When looking at the value however between the GT and GTS the GeForce 8600 GTS's inability to provide a significantly noticeable superior gameplay experience in line with its price premium prevents us from placing the title of being the better value on it.

The Gigabyte GeForce 8600 GT Silent definitely earns the title of being the best value. Its price is low, its performance is solid and rather close to the GTS, and it comes with a very fun and addicting full version game. We can ask nothing more of a mainstream level video card. If you have the cash though and want better overclocking and cooling, go ahead and get the GeForce 8600 GTS if you are in the market for a silent video card. There is no question that either will provide a solid game play experience in this price range, and they both will do it without making a sound. Both cards are great but the GT is simply the better value.