Even though NVIDIA's recent GeForce 8800 GT has rolled out, there's still plenty of folks out there who want a more affordable solution and for that the GeForce 8600 series provides a full featured DirectX 10 video card. And with new games such as Crysis just around the corner and upgrade does sound good. ASUS has met the challenge of bringing one of these cards in complete silence head-on with its Silent edition. Using a large passive cooling system allows this card to run well within its normal operating temperatures while have zero audio emissions. One can't help but notice the massive heatsink which has now become a hallmark, signature item of ASUS' branded Silent cards. - Boot Daily

ASUS Extreme N8600 GTS 256MB Silent Card Review

Its core clock comes set to 675MHz and the memory speed is at 2000MHz effective. You can, however, use NVIDIA's drivers and software to raise those speeds. On our bench we got the card to run fine at 710/2400MHz respectively, but keep in mind, ours is setup on a table and inside the confines of a PC case could yield different results. This card does require the use of a single 6-pin PCI Express power plug and includes a molex adapter for those using an older power supply. Using this card is interesting in that while the cooler does as advertised, it does emit quite a bit of heat into your case.

From a performance standpoint, the Extreme N8600 GTS is up to par with any of them out there and can run most games at good frame rates up to the current standard resolution so it'll have an appeal to those running 19-inch or smaller LCD monitors. ASUS has done a good job of packaging this card and equipping it with a cooler that's rather unique to its class. We are aware of the model from Gigabyte, however the ASUS cooler we feel is more advanced and provides the user with more placement options as to help guide the heat to varying areas within the PC case.

Pricing has fallen into line and you can now pick one up for under $180 dollars. We expect to see prices continue to drop as NVIDIA releases more G9x based GPU's which are based on a smaller die. In the end, this card will appeal to those whose desire for complete silence trumps just about everything and still want a DirectX 10 class video card. It would be a great solution for those who do home studio recording and such or whom just don't enjoy their PC's sounding like the Boeing test wind tunnel. We sure can highly recommend it.