GV-RX80L256V SilentPipe

Gigabyte SilentPipe card

Back of the card

Gigabyte was the first of Taiwan’s five largest motherboard manufacturers to make the switch from NVIDIA to ATI, making the move in late June of 2001. Of course, a few years later at Computex 2003, Gigabyte was responsible for another first, as they were the first board partner to provide both ATI and NVIDIA graphics products. Back in those days ATI and NVIDIA’s board partners were locked in exclusive agreements that prevented them from providing cards based on graphics chips from both companies. Within a handful of months of Gigabyte’s dual graphics provider announcement, both ASUS and MSI employed similar strategies for their own graphics lines.

Gigabyte’s engineering team is now hard at work coming up with innovative graphics card designs. Earlier this year we saw the first fruits of this effort, as Gigabyte shocked the world with their 3D1 GeForce 6600 GT card. The 3D1 combined two GeForce 6600 GT GPUs and their accompanying memory on one board for single-card SLI. Now Leadtek has announced a similar card, the WinFast Duo PX6600 GT Extreme, and ASUS is rumored to be working on something comparable.

Heatpipe sandwiched by heatsinks

Top of the card

Nice and snug

The GV-RX80L256V SilentPipe is another example of Gigabyte’s inventive spirit. Rather than rely on a traditional heatsink/fan cooling design as everyone else is doing with their standard RADEON X800 XL card, Gigabyte has their sights set on the silent crowd with their GV-RX80L256V SilentPipe. As graphics cards have grown more powerful over time, some have complained that they’ve also began to emit too much noise, particularly after NVIDIA’s GeForce FX 5800 Ultra fiasco. A growing number of enthusiasts want cutting-edge performance without excessive noise levels. As a result, silent, or near silent PCs have been all the rage, particularly for use in home theater PCs. This is where the GV-RX80L256V SilentPipe steps in.

Gigabyte uses their own custom heat pipe to keep the X800 XLs R430 graphics core cool. The tubes of the heat pipe are composed of aluminum, with a copper base resting above the R430 chip. The heat pipe is filled with liquid. As the R430 VPU heats up, the liquid in the heat pipe begins to boil, forcing hot vapor through the tubes to the other end of the heat pipe where it is cooled. From there the vapor condenses back to the liquid phase and returns to the other end of the heat pipe. This cycle is continually in motion, working to keep the graphics core cool. Gigabyte also uses a gold-plated aluminum heatsink for additional cooling on both sides of the card, including the board’s memory modules.

Gigabyte card is reverse 2-slot

Nice-looking card

This cooling system works so well Gigabyte doesn’t need a dedicated fan to keep the board’s temperature cool. If you recall Sapphire’s “ULTIMATE” line of RADEON 9800 and 9700 cards, which used heat pipe technology from Zalman for silent operation, the heat emitted was our #1 concern with the technology – you could literally burn yourself on these cards if you weren’t careful! Eventually Sapphire had to incorporate Zalman’s 80mm ZM-OP1 fan in the 9800 XT ULTIMATE to keep board temperatures down.

The underside of the card features a large heatsink

If you have a PCI-E mobo with PCI-E slots above the x16 slot, you will lose an x1 PCI-E slot

Other than the unique cooling solution, the rest of the GV-RX80L256V SilentPipe’s board design is pretty standard, right down to placement of the board’s components. Gigabyte also utilizes the same DVI/VGA combination as ATI does with their board, although you do get the addition of VIVO (video-in/video-out) support.

V-TUNER 2

For overclocking the GV-RX80L256V SilentPipe, Gigabyte includes their V-Tuner 2 software utility. V-Tuner 2 provides manual clock speed adjustment of the graphics core and memory (although increments of 1MHz for the core or memory currently aren’t provided).

VIVO/Accessories/bundle

VIVO capabilities are provided by ATI’s RAGE THEATER chip, which is a popular VIVO solution among ATI’s board partners. Included inside the board’s packaging is a custom designed VIVO module with S-Video and component video outputs on one side (for hooking the card up to an HDTV) while composite and S-Video inputs rest on the other side of the VIVO module. Gigabyte includes a small switch that’s used for switching from the component video out to S-Video.

Also included in the card’s packaging is a DVI adapter, driver CD, manual, and copies of CyberLink PowerDirector 3, Thief: Deadly Shadows (on DVD-ROM), and Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising.