Sapphire Cards
Sapphire is an ATI partner and, as such, we have a few of their Radeon cards here.Sapphire Radeon 9800XT
This is another reference design Radeon 9800XT.
Sapphire Radeon 9800XT Ultimate
This card was designed originally to be passively cooled, but when push came to shove, the heatsink just didn't keep the card cool enough. By throwing in a Zalman fan as large as the heatsink itself, Sapphire has created the coolest high end card that we have.
The fan can either be plugged into the 5V or 12V rail on a drive power connector using a special attachment provided. The fan is pretty quiet for its size, even at 12V speeds. We were definitely impressed with this card and glad to see that vendors are trying to get those high end cards to be even less noisy.
Sapphire Radeon 9600XT
This is the only passively cooled solution that we benchmarked. So, if you are looking for a silent solution, here is your answer. This card still overclocks pretty well too.
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Icewind - Wednesday, February 4, 2004 - link
Were are the comparison charts between the overclocked and stock speed 9800pro's? I must be blind, because I can't see them.par - Wednesday, February 4, 2004 - link
Where can I find the passively cooled 9600XT by sapphire? Newegg shows sapphires 9600xt with a fan.DerekWilson - Wednesday, February 4, 2004 - link
The Seagate HD: Barracuda 7200.7 PATA ... I'll add that to the tablemostlyprudent - Wednesday, February 4, 2004 - link
Nice article. A passively cooled 9600XT?!...I've found my next video card. There is one thing that I am unclear about - the Seagate hard drive used in the test setup - is it an SATA drive?