3DMark Vantage result is not indicative of evil, only performance.
By now we'll assume everyone is on the same page with graphics cards. You plug them in, they make pretty pictures, and everyone is happy. Well with this card you're going to be extremely so.
Fuelling this beastly budget board is the g92b core, a 55nm revision of the very same core in the 8800GT (g92). This means that there is less heat generated, and that more cores can be made on a single wafer of silicon - more cores means cheaper overall for us! 1GB of GDDR3 memory with a 256-bit memory bus is also great news, since there's more than enough space for even the most intensive of games to run very smoothly. Core and memory speeds remain at stock, but expect to be able to push this cool core in excess of 100MHz very easily - especially with the Zalman VF830 aftermarket cooler that GIGABYTE ever so kindly attached.
With an array of 0.3mm aluminium fins and two copper heatpipes, the large fan in the middle is able to effectively blow away all the heat generated by the core, as well as keeping the surrounding memory cool. This idles at 43 degrees, and load is only 55, giving you plenty of headroom to overclock (though 67dBA produced is a little on the louder side of annoying).
Only solid caps have been used on the card, and surprisingly ferrite chokes were also used - expect this card to last a little longer than those of yesteryear. Performance was the best in our roundup giving very good benchmark scores (including Vantage's P6666 - spooky!), and it is able to handle the latest games at good settings. The usual DVI and analogue video out ports round out a pretty swish card, and one that is definitely worth a good long think.
Issue: 133 | February, 2012