Gainward Ultra/980 SilentFX Professional
Gainward's Ultra/980 SilentFX Professional takes not just one step away from established mid-range norms, but two giant steps. It offers not only a completely silent passive cooler for the GPU it hosts, but dual DVI ports for those willing to partake in a little dual digital display action.Given that Gainward don't supply ATI-powered products, or indeed graphics cards based on anything other than NVIDIA GPUs, we simply need to decode the GPU model that the Ultra/980 uses to gauge its base performance. While the Ultra nomenclature points at an NVIDIA 'Ultra' GPU, the 980 doesn't get NVIDIA's impressive 5700 Ultra part, rather the regular 425MHz non-Ultra instead.
Paired with 550MHz DDR memory, up from the 500MHz that NVIDIA official specify but down on the 650MHz clock of the Albatron, the Gainward wraps only the GPU in its giant heatsink, leaving the memory modules indirectly cooled by your case airflow.
As you can see, the card is clad front and back in a Zalman ZM80D-HP graphics card heatsink, anodised by Zalman to match the PCB colour, at Gainward's request. Like the Albatron, the Ultra/980 doesn't require any external power source to function correctly. Due to the heatsink size, it's a two-slot card.
The back of the card looks no different to the first. As you can see, a pair of heatpipes move heat between the heatsinks.
The pair of DVI-I ports are what give the Ultra/980 its Professional signature.
The card uses Hynix HY5DU561622CT GDDR DRAMs, the -36 variant rated to 550MHz at 2.6V, exactly the speed Gainward run them at.
Finally, the Ultra/980 is capable of video input and a Texas Instruments TFP410PAP TMDS drives the second DVI-I port.
There you have it, a passively cooled GeForce FX 5700 with dual-DVI ports and VIVO. The market for quiet dual-DVI cards with decent performance is on the up then.
