Related Articles

The Card

The card is very similar to Gigabyte's 9600 Pro. Both are based off of ATi reference solutions. We have both the 9600 Pro from Gigabyte as well as a reference 9600 XT here for comparison.

The layout is identical with the ATI solution

The reference card and the Gigabyte is identical in layout. Gigabyte did replace the heatsink with a little golden jobbie with a bright blue LED; the PCB color is also blue. Normally we would start venting about reference designs right here but Gigabyte pulls a trump card before we can embark on a profanity induced tirade.

Twins! A Pro and a XT. The XT does have a Blue LED while the Pro does not

The memory chips used on the Gigabyte board are not run of the mill 300 Mhz chips but 350 Mhz ones. A quick run over to Samsung's site confirmed the code - K4D263238E-GC2A - 350MHz 700Mbps/pin.

The rest of the card is standard 9600 fare; VGA and DVI outputs as well as a S-Video out. No fancy VIVO capabilities, that is tied to the 9600 AIW (surprisingly one of the few products that Gigabyte does not cover).

The Noise

The reference 9600 XT is a fairly quiet card and in our experience, smaller fans tend to produce more noise as they have to spin faster to move the same volume of air as compared to a larger fan. Right off the bat we noticed that the R96XT seemed louder than the ATI 9600 XT and we took some measurements. The RX96XT clocks in at 48.3 DB while the 9600 XT is at 44.5 DB. For reference, here are the recorded noise levels of a few other cards -

The Gigabyte is relatively loud and the 4 decibels between that and the reference card is definitely noticeable. If noise in your system is a concern, you may want to think hard about this cardas it is approaching the 5950 range in terms of noise. Gigabyte may want to consider using a larger, slower fan in future cards. Note that measurements were taken from an open case at approximately 1 meter away from the sound card. CPU fan was a standard P4 heatsink.