For the reasons laid out in the beginning of the AnandTech article, the idea of a silently cooled 8800GT seems preposterous, die shrink or not.  The mind pictures a one slot card with a 3 slot passive cooler and heatpipes that extend beyond your case.  As it turns out, this card really isn’t that large, and while the temperatures do go well over 100C, the card exhibited no errors after a Crysis torture test.

If you are a fan of the opposite end of the spectrum, check out Ryan’s new review of the overclocked EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GT KO Edition, which certainly does have a fan.


“The night before our 8800 GT review went live, Derek called me and let me know that Sparkle sent along images of a passively cooled 8800 GT. Said one word: “impossible”. I told him that it had to be a Photoshop because there was no way you were going to get an 8800 GT running without a fan, the card was simply too hot.

The 754M transistors that make up G92 were simply switching too fast and dissipating too much heat to be cooled by anything without a fan. Sparkle could’ve lowered the clocks, that would’ve made it possible, but I thought there was just no way at stock speeds. And Sparkle was promising a bone stock 8800 GT, sans fan.

I had honestly forgotten about the card until I started work on the 8800 GT roundup, and there it was, in its innocent white box:”

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