Low noise fans and CPU heatsinks, even low noise storage drives have become the rage computer hardware. Today's end users prefer a silent solution and rightly so, be it for a 12cm case fan or an adjustable power supply. In the following pages, we will be reviewing Asus' latest addition to the "silent" movement, the N6600GT Silencer PCI-E model.

The main difference between the Silencer and the previous N6600GT models is of course the fanless, heatsink design and the available memory, with the Silencer providing 256 M of DDR3 while the previous model only had 128Mb. There is a slight difference in the core and memory clocks but not one worth investigating.

Throughout the review tests, we will be posting the results of the Silencer 6600GT in comparison with those of the N6600GT Extreme PCI-E interfaced card.

- Specifications

-Features

- NVIDIA® CineFX™ 3.0 engine
Full support for Microsoft DirectX9.0 Shader model 3.0 enables stunning and complex special effects
- NVIDIA SLI Multi-GPU ready
Dramatically scales performance by allowing two graphics card to be run in parallel.
- High-Speed GDDR3 memory interface
Support for the world's fastest GDDR3 memory delivers fluid frame rates for even the most advanced games and applications.
- NVIDIA UltraShadow™ II technology
Enhances the performance of bleeding-edge games
- NVIDIA® Intellisample™ 3.0 technology (HCT)
The industry's fastest antialiasing delivers ultra-realistic visuals, with no jagged edges, at lightning-fast speeds
- NVIDIA® nView™ multi-display technology
Provides the ultimate in viewing flexibility and control for multiple monitors
- Microsoft® DirectX 9 and OpenGL 1.5 support

- Asus SilentCool Technology provides the quietest environment and superior Cooling effect.
- ASUS Splendid : Bring Every Pixel To Life. Watching video on PCs is now as good as on the best TVs.
- ASUS GameFace ™ Messenger : Don ' t Type, Just Talk. Easy IM & live game conference in any PC games
- ASUS GameLiveShow : Stream live gaming action onto the Internet and share with other gaming enthusiasts.
- ASUS GameReplay : Record gaming action and strategy into MPEG4 files to share with other gaming enthusiasts.
- ASUS Video Security™ Online: Whether you're online or not, ASUS VideoSecurity Online provides you a flexible and economical security system. It can easily turn your computer into your own security server.
- ASUS OnScreenDisplay (OSD): OSD allows you to instantly adjust various display settings in almost any PC game without leaving the game.
- Diversified displays connectivity (DVI, VGA, DVI+VGA, DVI+TV-out)
- High-quality TV output for big screen gaming or presentations

As it can be seen from the above image, the new 6600GT Silencer maintains lower temperature levels compared to the previous 6600GT releases. This is the major merit of Asus' new release and we will see how well it performs later on.

- Retail/Package

We've become used to ASUS' stylish, attractive retail boxes, and the N6600GT Silencer is no exception. It includes the standard software bundle consisting of Asus DVD XP, Power Director, Media Show and of course the usual utilities and drivers. Also included are the "Join Operations" and "Xpand Rally" full game versions, as well as three new bundle games which ASUS uses in its latest releases, "Second Sight", "Powerdrome", and "Chaos League".

The retail box contains the usual array of cables, an HDTV out adaptor and a DVI to VGA adaptor. As for manuals, ASUS includes two color manuals, one for Utilities and Driver installation and the other a helpful step by step graphics card installation guide.

The very useful and comprehensive manual and setup guide...

The retail package contains all that's required for a basic graphics card setup. Note here that the driver included is not the official Nvidia release. Instead, ASUS releases an "Asus modified version" for its graphics card release. It is recommended this one be used as it is tuned to perform better with ASUS cards.

The bundled cables...

Having run through the specs and features of the new N6600GT Silencer edition as well as an overview of the retail box, let's continue on to the next page and the rest of the review.

- Architecture

The ASUS N6600GT Silencer is a fanless graphics card, employing a large heatsink (occupying the largest part of the front surface of the card), and a single heatpipe that helps with heat dissipation, transferring the heat to the heatsink and fins.

The cooling mechanism in detail...

The graphics card is now a little bit bigger than in the previous versions of the 6600, though this will not cause any problems with installations, since the heatpipe can be rotated 90° and positioned in one of two ways, so that it fits every user's situation.

90° rotation is an option, to avoid any mechanical interference...

Having rotated the Heatpipe, we took a photo of the rotation mechanism...

- The card itself

As discussed above, the card is a normal sized one, with the exception of the cooling system, which is necessary in order to achieve maximum performance, with no noise and low temperatures.

The heatsink is of copper construction, as expected, in order to maximize heat dissipation and performance... one can clearly discern in the photo below, the ASUS logo in the middle of the heatsink..

The red stylish heatsink of the Silencer...

Nothing fancy on the back side of the card, with the two copper covers, protecting the memory modules from overheating.

The output signals are the usual Standard 15-pin D-sub, HDTV-out and DVI-I output.

Dual DVI-I output and a single D-sub found on the card's rear

As we've seen in this page, the ASUS N6600GT Silencer, is all about silence and heat dissipation. Do not expect to see the beast-like 6800Ultra performance or anything that "heavy duty" though. Let's move on to the next page and have a look at the test system and on to the tests themselves.

With 3DMark05, Futuremark continues the tradition in its benchmarking software by providing a state-of-the-art Microsoft ® DirectX ® 9 3D performance benchmark.
3DMark05 is an all new 3DMark version making the most of Microsoft's DirectX 9. The previous version 3DMark03, did a nice introduction into this level of technology. However 3DMark03 used DirectX 9 specific features in a limited manner, because fully supporting hardware was rare at the time of its launch. In contrast, 3DMark05 requires DirectX 9 hardware with full support for at least Shader Model 2, and takes shader usage to never before seen levels.
Just like its predecessors, 3DMark05's point system is set so that at the moment of release, the high-end VGA cards available in stores can only score around 5000 3DMarks, whereas the worst card that meets the programs requirements yields a score of 1000.

Game Test 1 -Return to Proxycon

Being the sequel to the "Battle of Proxycon" from 3DMark03, in "Return to Proxycon" we're once again set in space and the battle continues as space pirates invade a cargo ship in order to take control of its valuable cargo.

This test, tries to simulate a future first-person shooter game with all the high details that entails. The dynamic shadows, high-detailed environment and advanced lighting techniques ensure that under normal circumstances, no recent card can run it with decent frame rates.

Game Test 2 - Firefly Forest

A forest gets filled with magic fireflies in the night. The moon is nearly full, illuminating the forest with a bluish faint light. The magic fireflies have flickering bright green lights that playfully move around the forest.

This scene is a nice example of a smaller scale outdoor scene with rich vegetation. Immediate visibility is not so far, and there is a skybox surrounding the whole scene.

A large number of trees with their branches swinging separately, and dense vegetation being dynamically distributed according to the camera movements, make this test the most demanding of the three.

Game Test 3 - Canyon Flight

A Jules Verne type airship flies through a canyon guarded by a dangerous sea monster. The airmen defend their ship using heavy cannons, but these seem to have no effect on the huge sea monster. Finally the crew manages a narrow escape using the "last resort" afterburners of the airship.

This scene is fairly complex with large areas of water reflecting the high canyon walls. The water actually is one of the key points of interest in this scene. The water not only does realistic looking reflections and refractions, it has a depth fog, making the sea monster swimming under the airship actually look deep down in the water. The air in this scene also uses a volumetric fog, making distant cliffs of the canyon really look far away.

Now let us see how the N6600GT Silencer performed in each test, in comparison to the standard Asus N6600GT. As one can see from the above graph, the results do differ, but not by more than one or two fps.

Final Score

 3DMarks on 3DMark05 are now calculated by the following formula:

(Game Test 1 * Game Test 2 * Game Test 3)^0.33 * 250

That's basically the geometric mean of the total frames in each game multiplied by 250. This means that all game tests are now equal.

Almost 200 marks more were reported for the Silencer 6600GT card compared to the 6600GT standard edition. The 256MB of DD3 sure makes a difference - just 128MB of DD3 for the N6600GT.

Since the majority of today's applications and games are compatible with DirectX 9, the need of benchmark applications that use DX 9 has been brought up. The benchmark uses the 3D engine (Krass engine) of the Aquanox game.

Aquamark Triscore

The Aquamark Triscore comprises 3 values: the overall system performance, the performance of the graphics system and the CPU performance. Keep in mind that this is not the total result of the tests, but the result of the whole benchmark process including all 9 chapters.

particle
vertex
massive

3DMark 2001

is the predecessor to 3DMark03. It's mainly a directx8.1 benchmark and the score depends a lot on the CPU power of your computer. However for reference use only we decided it'd be best to just leave it in our benchmark list so you can compare the next generation cards with the possibly outdated you have at home.

For the first time, the Asus N6600GT standard model, takes the by nearly 100 marks. As discussed above, this test is included merely for comparison reasons, due to it being outdated (dx8).

Half life 2 is no doubt the most anticipated pc game of all times. Gamers keeping the excellence of Half Life 1 in their mind as well as the remarkable E3 demo preview, have been anxiously waiting for the much delayed release of HL2.

Characters - Advanced facial animation system delivers the most sophisticated in-game characters ever seen. With 40 distinct facial "muscles," human characters convey the full array of human emotion, and respond to the player with fluidity and intelligence.

Physics - From pebbles to water to 2-ton trucks respond as expected, as they obey the laws of mass, friction, gravity, and buoyancy.

Graphics - Source's shader-based renderer, like the one used at Pixar to create movies such as Toy Story® and Monster's, Inc.®, creates the most beautiful and realistic environments ever seen in a video game.

AI - Neither friends nor enemies charge blindly into the fray. They can assess threats, navigate tricky terrain, and fashion weapons from whatever is at hand.

To measure performance we used the Video Stress Test(VST) that is available in the CounterStrike:Source beta available through Steam. We set all the details to the highest level and each time changed the resolution from 800x600 up to 1600x1200.

With the AA and AF settings disabled, we took fps measurements at each resolution. The N6600GT was not that far behind the Silencer with only marginal differences in framerate at all resolutions.

With AA and AF set at 4x and 8x respectively, the N6600GT took the lead, though as the resolution increased, the Silencer nosed ahead. Again, the difference in framerate between the two cards cannot in any way be considered as significant with perhaps the exception of that at 1600x1200, where the Silencer achieved a very satisfying framerate providing excellent playing performance at the highest resolution.

A massive demonic invasion has overwhelmed the Union Aerospace Corporations? (UAC) Mars Research Facility leaving only chaos and horror in its wake. As one of the few survivors, you struggle with shock and fear as you fight your way to Hell and back, in an epic clash against pure evil.

Activision made it's miracle again with Doom 3 which is said to be the best-looking game ever, thanks to the brand-new OpenGL graphics engine used to generate its convincingly lifelike, densely atmospheric, and surprisingly expansive environments. If you are a fan of the previous Doom games then you will get many flashbacks with this revision, since you will find reimagined versions of almost every monster from both Doom and Doom II.

To measure performance on the game we used the timedemo demo1 command from the console (Alt+Ctrl+~).
Enabling the high quality setting and executing the timedemo demo1 command twice for each resolution, we witnessed the following:

First, without Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering settings enabled, we had the following results:

Once more, the Silencer performed slightly better than the N6600GT.

Similar performance as above without AA and AF, just lower frame rates.

For all you racing fans out there, this test is for you and will represent the Racing game category in our benchmarks.

From the graphics point of view the first thing you'll notice in the game is the excellent amount detail of your racing car. High resolution textures on the car and lighting make it quite impressive. All the eye candy such as the sun reflection in the virtual camera are still the same as the older CM versions but motion blur has been added when your card hits something hard which will happen most often if you're new to the racing simulation world.

To measure performance on the game we used fraps to get the average fps of the whole 8th stage of UK which is actually the only stage you get to play on the demo.

The only significant difference between the two cards worth mentioning is at the 1280x1024, where the average framerate for the Silencer is 84 compared to 70 for the N6600GT.

By enabling AA and AF, the drop in framerate is by about half, except for 800x600 where the difference is still significant at around 30 frames.