Gigabyte GV-N96TSL-1GI GeForce 9600GT SilentCell Review :: Card

Card

Silent Cell sticker

Rear of PCB

2-pin connector

GIGABYTE uses their usual purple PCB with their 9600GT card. The heatsink has a set of 12 fins that stick out of the IO drawing in air from the outside of the video card. The heatsink itself covers the entirety of the front of the PCB with fins wrapping around the rear of the PCB. Three heat pipes lie beneath the heatsink covering the graphics chip. One goes towards the front of the card; one goes more towards the middle and the third leads out to the rear.

Top of card

SLI Bridge

Heat pipe

6-pin power

The card requires a 6-pin power connector which is on the rear of the PCB under the heatsink. A single SLI bridge is located on the front of the top of the card, allowing for two GIGABYTE GV-N96TSL-1GI cards to be used together to improve gaming performance. The rear of the card has the mounting bracket for the graphics chip, the part number sticker and the Serial Number sticker. The card is a PCI Express 2.0 compliant card meaning that it can be provided with up to 5GB/second of bandwidth from the chipset.

PCI Express

Silent Cell

Top down view

IO

The IO of the card is different from the standard video card. As stated before there are 12 fins drawing in outside air using the front fan as a source of air. ASUS decided to include a HDMI connector, a Dual-Link DVI connector and a VGA connector. Note that only two of the connectors can be used at one time (a limitation common to most video cards), and you can use two VGA, two DVI-I, two HDMI or any combination of the two with adapters. The TV-Out is ready for HDTVs with that connection and this makes the GV-N96TSL-1GI a good fit for the HTPC enthusiast that doesn't want a card that makes a lot of noise or generate a lot of heat.