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The Verdict

Well there we go. What was really interesting to see performance wise was that the performance difference between the iChill 256MB model and reference 512 MB model 7950 GT is pretty much close to nothing. It's because the iChill is clocked slightly higher and can compensate a little on that loss. On the long term my bet is to go for a 512 MB card though. Future games will have larger and more textures. Memory is so important, but fact is that dropping 256MB will significantly drop the price as well and it can save you a good 50-60 bucks easily. So if you are on a set budget I might have found the right card for you. In retrospect an iChill 7900GS will get you close to the 7950 GT performance as well, and that product is even less expensive.

So this conclusion is getting a little complex. Let's stick to the card itself. For the money obviously you'll get a lot of features and performance. I'm really fond of what Inno3D is doing with the iChill series. If you are in the market for a very decent graphics card that is totally silent (example for a HTPC) then this is most certainly one brilliant piece of hardware to pick up. Bare in mind though that the GPU will get hot and that the residual heat is being dumped inside your PC. Personally I would go for the iChill edition with active cooling. It makes use of the Arctic cooler (NV Silencer 6), cools brilliantly, dumps the heat outside the PC and isn't at all noisy, all for the same amount of money. Then again if you have enough ventilation in your case or work with an open chassis then this is not an issue.

A silly error on the product is that the passive cooler although nice looking, is rather big and blocking the SLI connector. You can not get two of these cards and set them up in SLI. That's not good. Furthermore there's not many negatives to report on this Inno3D iChill card other than the fact that it's not a DirectX 10 product. Gradually over this year Vista will slowly become more important, and thus also DirectX 10 gaming. I do however feel it'll be a long time before we actually will see a good number of DX10 games to choose from so whether that would really be an issue is something I'll leave to you.

The iChill edition is very complete. It offers a nice 3 year warranty, the gold plated DVI connectors ensure better signal quality, free game of RACE, standard faster clocked card - you know it's all good. And that makes this product a very valid purchase once again. I'm not giving it our best hardware award but instead an editor's choice award as it definitely deserves one for the many positives this product has to offer.

The new packaging, bundle, cooling and box design make the iChill products much more appealing for the USA and European market and that's where the products now really need to be found. Why do i say this ? Inno3D cards are hard to find in this area and that's such a shame as I really like what they have been doing recently. This is the gear you and I like to see in our PC's. This is Guru3D material for sure.

We for sure will keep on reviewing their products and get the distributors aware of the fact that Inno3D's products are worthy of selling in that USA and European channel.

GeForce 7950 GT 256MB DDR3 iChill with pre-clock and AC passive cooler
Company: Inno3D
Price: 229 USD/EUR ex VAT
Info: Inno3D.com