ATI Radeon X700 Pro Roundup --- TheThirdMedia Hardware

Gigabyte GV-RX70P256V

If you've noted our observations thus far (and more to come on the following pages), most of the RADEON X700 PRO cards operate somewhat audibly and that's granted because they have a compact cooler with space for only a small fan operating at high speeds. Well, you won't get any of that nonsense if you go by the way of Gigabyte's GV-RX70P256V graphics card. Perhaps the only RADEON X700 PRO card utilizing heat pipe technology in conjunction with a huge radiator, this is the only true silent graphics card in this shootout. A small copper base makes contact with the VPU and helps to quickly extract heat off the core and transfers it to the heat pipe. The heat pipe in turn transfers heat to the huge aluminum heatsinks found on the front and rear of the card. The whole cooling unit is rather slim and it does not obstruct any adjacent slots and neither would it bump into the motherboard chipset's heatsink at the rear side of the card.

Here's a first look at the front fa?ade of the Gigabyte GV-RX70P256V graphics card cooled by silent heat pipe technology. Gigabyte added a nice decorative touch over the otherwise plain heatsink radiator.

This card is also one of the two cards in our shootout that boasts of an ATI Rage Theater ASIC that endows the card with video capturing capabilities.

The graphics card's slim profile and its rear faceplate connectors.

On the rear side of the card, the heatsink is partitioned into two segments. The red portion belongs to the heat pipe and functions as its radiator while the gold portion is to facilitate heat removal from the back of the VPU.

Again we found the card using Samsung's 2ns Graphics DDR3 memory chips, identical to the other cards in this shootout.

The Gigabyte GV-RX70P256V graphics card with its box packaging.

Gigabyte surely doesn't let its potential buyer down with extras, even if one is not really considering the card due for its bundle:-

DVI-I to VGA adapter

HDTV / VIVO breakout box

Gigabyte GV-RX70P256V User Manual

Driver CD

Software: CyberLink PowerDVD 5.0, CyberLink Power Director 3 ME, Gigabyte V-Tuner 2.

Games: Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising (1 CD), Thief: Deadly Shadows (1 DVD)

Bearing in mind the VIVO features the card possesses, the software bundled is on the spot for light video editing. The game package too is one of the better ones in the shootout, though they aren't the talk of town any more.

Accessories-wise, you get a HDTV / VIVO breakout box and a DVI-I to VGA adapter.

The left side of the unit has a toggle switch that help one select the active output option, which is either S-Video (TV) or Component (HDTV). This is handy if you require both forms of output options without having to unplug/plug the cables often. Following the toggle switch, there are Composite input and S-Video input connectors.

On the right-hand side of the breakout box, you'll find S-Video and Component output connections.

While the breakout box provided by Gigabyte is certainly useful and acts as a very neat input/output hub, the package still lets us down by not supplying the appropriate extension cables (Composite, S-Video and Component) to connect the actual devices. If you already have these cables ready, this is a moot point, but we would still prefer Gigabyte to provide all the cables and present the product as a complete package.

Here's another look at the Gigabyte GV-RX70P256V RADEON X700 PRO graphics card with heat pipe cooling technology for silent operation.

One note we would like to add is that pure heat pipe based cooling solutions (such as this card) tend to be much warmer than the active cooling counterparts. Some of the bigger and better heat pipe cooling solutions couple a large low speed fan to boost the cooling efficiency and these generally keep the card's temperature low and maintain silent operation too. This was not the case for the Gigabyte GV-RX70P256V and we do recommend installing it in systems with good airflow, else the card will only serve to escalate the temperature within your chassis.

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