![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Sunday , February 22, 2004
- Author:
- Brent Justice
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
Sapphire Ultimate 9600XT & 9800XT
Sapphire’s brand new top of the line “Ultimate” 9600XT and 9800XT are on the test bench. We find out if silent is really silent and if these cards are worth your hard earned dollars. Also this is a great guide to show you just what more you are getting between a 9600XT and 9800XT purchase.
Introduction:
Heat and noise are two issues that many of us have come to expect with higher performance electronics. The latest video cards of today for personal computers are incredible compared to what we had only ten years ago. But as we have advanced with the technology we are still burdened by one very limiting factor, and that is heat. Heat is the number one enemy of components like CPUs and VPU/GPUs. As we make the dies smaller and smaller, cramming more and more transistors into the small spaces, the temperatures just keep increasing.
Fans are one obvious way to get rid of this heat. By using fans to push the heat away from the hot heatsinks or to blow over the portions of the card we can help cool it down. Fans can only go so far though. Sure, you can use bigger fans, with bigger blades, and more RPMs but doing so also increases the noise level quite a bit. I think we all remember the most famous video card leaf blower of recent times, the GeForceFX 5800. While the fan was powerful, and pushed that heat away with great force, it was also a force to be reckoned with when it came to the loudness of that beast. Recently, quieter fans have been implemented in video cards to reduce the noise. Though the noise is reduced it is not totally gone.
What if we were to tell you there were some video cards out there that are fast and silent where noise is not an issue? We bet some of you would be highly interested in such a solution. Well, one does exist thankfully. However, there might be one or two trade-offs you will need to take into consideration for such solutions.
Sapphire is a company that has made itself known in the last few years in a big way. Back in 2001 when ATI opened up to OEMs and Add-In-Board partners, Sapphire was one of the first to sell ATI based cards. Sapphire designs, manufactures, and distributes a complete range of ATI video cards. Currently Sapphire ships out over one million units a month, which is quite a feat considering their short time in the retail market. In fact Sapphire even produces many of ATI’s own cards. Sapphire has come a long way fast and they are continuing to push forward with new and innovative technologies.
Sapphire currently has a basic product line known as their “Atlantis” brand of video cards. These are your basic designs using reference core and memory clock speeds. Sapphire also marketed a “Fireblade” edition that had raised memory clock speeds for certain cards. One of Sapphires newest product lines out on the market now are their “Ultimate” branded video cards.
What makes these cards “Ultimate”? That would be their completely silent operating nature utilizing cooling technology from Zalman. Sapphire has adapted Zalman’s ZM80 series VGA heat-pipe cooling solutions to create a complete and silent video card bundle. If you head over to Zalman’s website you can read all about the cooling solution the Sapphire 9800XT Ultimate uses. You will see that it uses the ZM80C-HP heatpipe VGA cooler. This cooling unit uses two big heatsinks on both sides of the card that are raised above the card and have a heatpipe connecting them both together to transfer heat. The Sapphire 9800XT Ultimate also comes with the optional ZM-OP1 noiseless fan to aid in cooling for an even more stable system, though the card can be run in normal operating mode without the fan.
Sapphire 9800XT Ultimate:
The Sapphire Ultimate 9800XT is based on ATI’s R360 VPU known as the Radeon 9800XT. This card operates at the reference specs for a 9800XT which is 412MHz core frequency and 365MHz (730MHz DDR) memory frequency.
Nothing better to show off a cool product than to have a window into the box to let you see the product. The front of the box has a clear plastic window to let you see the video card with its massive heatsink and the slim noiseless fan. You will also see the software included with the bundle listed on the front which includes two games, a coupon for Half Life 2 and Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness full version game. The back of the box shows you what the video card looks like with the fan in place and you can see the heatpipe surrounding the card.
When you first open the box up you will find everything laid out very well in two layers. The top layer contains the manual, CD’s, cables and adapters. The second layer contains the video card and the fan.
When we removed the video card from the box we found a little surprise waiting for us down inside it. If you will look at the first picture above you will see a heatsink just laying there in the box. This heatsink is a RAM heatsink which is suppose to be affixed to two RAM modules on the back of the card. If you look in the second picture above you will see the RAM modules that this RAM heatsink should be attached to. Apparently through shipping this RAM heatsink had been knocked off the video card. As you can see they are simply attached with thermal adhesive tape instead of an epoxy.
We also had another little surprise. If you look in the third picture you will see where we found one of the two screws and locking nut for the noiseless fan. The other screw was screwed into the fan. Apparently this screw wasn’t put on tight enough and must have jarred itself loose during shipping. These things do happen sometimes, so be sure to check your card before installing it to make sure everything is where it should be.
As you can see above this video card utilizes two massive heatsinks. They are connected with a heatpipe that transfers heat from the core around to the back heatsink. By using these two massive heatsinks and the heatpipe technology this card can operate at normal frequencies without any fans at all for a total silent cooling solution.
The first picture above shows you how the heatsink is connected to the core of the video card. Two screws hold it firmly down onto the core and the shim for the core is present. In the second picture you can see that the heatsink itself is raised off of the PCB so that it does not come into contact with any video card components. The heatpipe wraps around the rear of the card. In the third shot you can see the two brackets used to steady the two heatsinks and keep them in place. This is also the side the fan goes on. The fourth shot shows you how the back heatsink is attached to the card. The screws from the front go through to this back piece. The fifth shot shows you another angle from the rear of the card.
To get a better look at where the missing RAM heatsink should go we removed the back heatsink. As you can see the heatpipe does not reside inside of the heatsink, rather it comes into contact with it in a groove and uses thermal paste to transfer heat.
With the RAM heatsink off we could get a look at the RAM modules being used. The Sapphire Ultimate 9800XT uses Hynix memory HY5DU5732222A EM-25. This means the memory is operating at 2.5ns and has max rated speed of 400MHz. The Ultimate 9800XT has a standard VGA, DVI and TV-Out port supporting S-Video and Composite with the provided adapter.
The fan is optional; you don’t have to install it if using this card at normal frequencies. However, if you plan to overclock or operate in a very hot environment or have poor case cooling it might help to install this fan. The fan is a slim noiseless fan. It has two operating modes depending on how you hook it up. There is a power connector included with four connectors in two different colors. If you plug the fan into the white connector the fan will be operating in “Silent Mode” using only 5v of power. This mode is completely silent, though the fan is spinning and pushing air it makes no sound. The second mode is called “Normal Mode” and can be used by plugging the fan into the black connector putting out 12V of power. This mode pushes a lot of air, but it does make some noise doing it. Still, the noise isn’t as loud as some other VGA cooling fans. Thanks to its large diameter it doesn’t have to spin as fast to pump out more air volume.
In Silent Mode the fan spins at only 1400RPM and according to Sapphire puts out 20dB of noise. In Normal Mode the fan spins at a faster 2800RPM but puts out only 33dB of noise. So even in Normal Mode the fan is still a very quite fan.
So then what are the drawbacks to such a cooling solution? That would be its pure size. This video card has two very massive heatsinks attached to it and that alone makes this card very heavy. It also means that this card is not a single-slot solution.
Once you attach the fan to the video card you will see that it encompasses a few PCI slots on our motherboard. Thankfully the Fan is high enough off of the motherboard that you can still install PCI cards in the system. In fact having this fan installed may actually help cool them as well.
Inside the box you will find a power cable, an S-Video cable, a Composite cable an S-Video to Composite adapter and a DVI to VGA adapter. Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness full version game is included along with a basic driver CD, an overclocking program and PowerDVD XP 4.0. There is also a coupon inside to obtain Half Life 2 for free when it is available as well as a cute little Sapphire case badge.