14 DAY TRIAL // One of the disadvantages of high-end graphics cards is that they tend to make a lot of noise when they go at full power, because the cooler has to work really fast to compensate for the extra heat. There are ways to reduce the noise, though, and to at least make casual PC use happen with no annoying background sounds.
ASUS has introduced a graphics card that goes to the true limit of sound optimization: the GeForce GTX 780 Strix edition.
This video card has a new cooler that doesn't make any noise at all if you're doing random things on your PC, like surfing the web or reading a document.
It's a way to take advantage of the double graphics that modern PCs possess. The add-in board only gets used when you launch a game or a video editing program, or a benchmark.
The rest of the time, it's idle, so ASUS figured it would be useful to make it so that the Stix, at least, doesn't move its fans at all in that state.
If you have a reasonably good Intel CPU or AMD APU, you can probably manage a film, video chat or conference using the integrated iGP or GPU too.
Thus, you will truly have no noise to scowl at when sitting back and listening to the sounds accompanying the video stream.
It's a bigger boon that you might think. Headphones may do well enough to block out sounds while you're hunkered in front of the monitor for a game, but when you lounge back for a movie, you don't have that luxury, not if you don't want to watch it alone. A card that generates zero dB will be useful.
It's a shame that ASUS hasn't provided the specifications of the GeForce GTX 780 Strix, besides the use of 6 GB GDDR5 VRAM anyhow.
It's also not clear if those five heatpipes visible in the press photo are the only ones delivering heat from the graphics chip to the heatsink.
If the newcomer is only meant to act as a launch platform for the 0dB cooling technology, it might not have a very high factory overclock, if it has one at all.
“Say hello to ASUS Strix GeForce GTX 780 6GB. Featuring our new 0dB Fan feature. Meaning that the card will stop its fans completely when idle and during light GPU load. More info will follow soon,” the company said on its Facebook page.
