Today we will be looking at the WinFast PX8400 GS Silent graphics card from Leadtek. This is a low-end GeForce 8 series card designed for mainstream use in both the OEM and retail space. The interesting thing about the budget video card market is not how inexpensive things are but how many extra features are becoming standard issue. For instance the WinFast PX8400 GS Silent comes with several HD related items to make it a perfect candidate for any home theatre PC system or for the casual movie buff stuck at their computer. In the high-end gaming world these features would never even be mentioned. And an exclusive feature to this card is the dual link DVI output. - Ninja Lane

Leadtek WinFast PX8400 GS Silent Graphics Review

By nature DVI and HDMI can be interchangeable but in many cases the signals are never interoperated correctly resulting in poor HD video quality. The WinFast PX 8400 GS comes with these interpreters built in so you can watch HDTV on your home theatre system or decode H.264 movies on the fly with the help of PureVideo HD all at resolutions upwards to 2560x1600. Hardware wise the WinFast PX8400 GS Silent comes with 256MB of onboard DDR2 memory and will require a single PCI Express video slot. No external power is required and the Silent in the name means no cooling fan to disrupt your favorite movie.

DirectX 10 support comes standard making this a perfect upgrade choice for those wishing to get the most from Windows Vista. On the surface this card looks and works like any other NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS video card with the addition of a completely passive cooling method instead of the standard heatsink and fan combo. As you can imagine the heatsink is quite large but also very light so there is no danger of structural card failure due to excessive heatsink weight. Looking around the card we see that the DDR2 memory chips are supplied by Hynix and appears with access time of 2.5ns running at 800MHz.

The Leadtek passive heatsink appears to be an extruded part given the uniform geometry and one-way design. A machine process finished off the heatsink by cutting the vertical grooves and making way for the mounting hardware. The heatsink is attached using two mounting screws with the attachment nuts being pressed into the aluminum. The heatsink features a grey anodized finish with the Leadtek logo having been sand blasted into place. In the home theatre PC world silence is the name of the game and it is certainly nice to see manufacturers experimenting with alternative cooling methods for noise reduction.

We don't normally deal with budget products but every once in awhile something comes along that sparks our interest. In the case of Leadtek's WinFast PX8400 GS Silent the passive GPU cooler is quite interesting and unique to a product like this. When Leadtek announced the WinFast PX8400 GS Silent on August 20th they compared the video card to the Airbus A380 claiming a perfect combination between silence and luxury. Simply put this translates into friendly marketing speak to describe the integrated HD video support and passive GPU cooler both of which are welcome additions to any home theatre PC.

Performance wise the GeForce 8400 GS is at a disadvantage when it comes to gaming due to the 64-bit memory interface, but the card does hold its own. In terms of overclocking, and after a few quick stability tests we settled on a respectable 501/962MHz even without hardware and/or voltage modifications. To that point Leadtek does offer an overclocked version of the GeForce 8400 GS which you can recognize by the Extreme suffix. And this card features the same design, active cooling, and of course higher performance. So it might be worth checking out if you have a few extra bucks.