Sidney

Completely silent and fragtastic gaming? Oh yeah, baby, and it comes in the form of Gigabyte's Silent-Pipe Radeon X800 XL. By now, we all know that the X800 XL offers a lot of bang for the buck, and if you read my last couple of X800 XL reviews, you would know that ATI's stock cooler on the X800 XL is quite noisy. While some companies are releasing 'quiet' or 'nearly silent' X800 XL solutions, Gigabyte completely eliminated the noise problem by extending its Silent-Pipe technology to this excellent VPU.

My first thought when asked to review a completely silent X800 XL was, 'Hey, that would be a perfect HTPC card. Good gaming and silent! Sign me up!' Unfortunately, the height of the Silent-Pipe X800 XL (GV-RX80L256V) due to its heatpipes will prohibit it from fitting in my current HTPC case (an Antec Overture) and many others. Nevertheless, it still seems like a top media PC option to me. Keep reading to find out if the performance is on par with other X800 XL PCI Express cards and to learn more about this cool and silent offering from Gigabyte.

http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=801

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lazyman

Opteron 165 (2) @2.85 1.42 vcore AMD Stock HSF + Chill Vent II