BFG Technologies BFG GeForce 9800 GT, (512 MB) Passive Video Card Reviews

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Average ratings from 2 sites

	Newegg.com
	Amazon.com

Wize has read 10 reviews

5 stars		(4)
4 stars		(0)
3 stars		(2)
2 stars		(1)
1 star		(3)

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This card is seriously under-cooled! You better have an insane amount of air flow running through your case to even consider using this card. And if you have that many fans in your case already I doubt that a passively cooled video card is much of a concern to you. I had an 80mm case fan pointing directly at the heat sink of the card but a couple of hours of gaming still made the card overheat and go belly up. from Amazon.com It will NOT underclock to save power and reduce heat output! Nuts!! This thing draws a hellacious amount of power compared to my 8800GT because it won't clock down during normal desktop usage!Further, this card prevents my system from recovering from suspend to RAM properly; despite a variety of BIOS config attempts, video POST on resume, etc. Other Thoughts: You will get quiet out of this card, but you will produce a vast amount of heat and waste a lot of power - both because of the inability to underclock and because you can't suspend to RAM anymore. from Newegg.com Pros: Bought this card as a replacement for a passively cooled (using a somewhat similar heatpipe layout) GeForce 8600GTS from MSI. This card performs somewhere between 2 and 2.5 times as fast as that card did with twice the video memory while still remaining completely silent. from Newegg.com This card tends to run very hot. Using only the case fan in my system (turned up higher than I prefer due to noise it generates), the 9800 GT idles at ~60C, runs 2D applications such as Photoshop at ~64C, and runs at well over 90C for games and will generally crash the system giving a BSOD error. For this reason, this card is only useful for 2D applications, and I would recommend buying a cheaper card for this purpose. from Amazon.com Pros: I dont want to affect the rating of BFG products so I give 5. However I am switching to ATI as I have heard this issue does not affect ATI. from Newegg.com Cons: You can't run this card with an open case since there will be no air flowing across the card. Not going to ding it points for something that someone buying this card should know to begin with. Other Thoughts: A bit pricey but no more so than buying a 9800GT and adding an aftermarket cooler to it. from Newegg.com Pros: + 9800GT !+ Putting heatsink on top does not block lower card slots is great Cons: Cooling problems. Manufacturer product page says "System chassis intake airflow greater than or equal to 25 CFM being directed towards the graphics card"But, when I took the time to check fan specs (flow rate/speed/size) and look at how that airflow will move around in my case, I find that 25cfm is a fair amount of air. from Newegg.com Cons: It got really really ridiculously hot. I had my case open so airflow likely wasn't an issue. According to BFG it's supposed to run no more than 90C under load, but mine was around 100c running my OS. Just playing TF2 for 15 minutes and it hit 120C. from Newegg.com Bought this card back in February when it suddenly appeared alongside another card I was watching the price on. It replaced my previous passively cooled video card (a GeForce 8600GTS). from Amazon.com Fairly certain this isn't an AGP card as it says it has PCI Express support, you may want to ask them before purchasing. from Amazon.com

Description

The BFG GeForce® 9800 GT graphics card with ThermoIntelligence Passive Cooling is perfect for Media Center or Home Theater PCs, where absolute quiet is a requirement.

Specs

Released	10 months ago
Installed Memory	512 MB
Graphic Processor	NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT
Display Interface	DVI-I (dual link) x 2
Card Interface	PCI Express
Analog Video Standards	S-Video Composite
Compatibility	PC
Fill Rate	33.6 Bilion pixels/sec
Form Factor	Plug-in card
GPU Clock Speed	600 MHz
Included Accessories	DVI to VGA Adapter x 1 Drivers CD HDTV Out Cable
Input Type	Component Video
Installed Memory / Technology	512 MB (GDDR3 SDRAM)
MPN	BFGE98512GTHE
Max. Screen Resolution	2560 x 1600
Memory Bandwidth	57.6 GB/sec
Memory Data Width	256-bit
Memory Tech Unknown Memory Data Width	256-bit
Operating System	Microsoft Windows Vista
Output Interface	TV Out HDMI
Package Type	Retail
RAMDAC Speed	400 MHz
Refresh Rate at Max Res	60 Hz @ 2560 x 1600
Special Features	SLI Multi GPU Ready HDTV TV-out Support
UPC	876758002845
Video Compression Standards	MPEG-2
Warranty	Limited

Electronics

Graphics Cards