Leadtek claims it is the Airbus of the GPU industry

QUITE OFTEN VENDORS will launch a product comparing it another successful product, such as tennis shoes compared to sports cars and animals.

This time, Leadtek launched the PX8400GS TDH Silent, passively cooled 8400GS card. This would not be interesting announcement per se, since we have seen numerous passively-cooled 8400 boards on the market already. Ticket to ride comes with dual-link DVI connector, so resolution of 2560x1600 is supported. Leadtek obviously claims that there are some 8400GS cards on the market that do not come with dual-link DVI, thus with this card the support for 30" monitors is guaranteed. Even though Leadtek claims that this card will deliver "total value entertainment solution", and we would agree with that up to the level of video playback.

This card does not have enough fill-rate to deliver 3D performance in intensive 3D games of today, as the words "playable" and "resolution of 2560x1600" go in a same sentence only when 8800GTX/Ultra/HD2900XT 1GB are mentioned as well.

For those that have questionmarks above their heads where does the comparison with Airbus A340 comes from, reason is fairly simple: when yours truly flies to San Francisco from Croatia, I always opt for a connection in Munich since Lufthansa flies Airbus A340-300 and A340-600 to SFO, instead of flying on 747-400 from Frankfurt.

Reason is fairly simple: A340 is the most-silent intercontinental airliner, and you won't break your head if you're getting up from a window seat and go for a walk. It is still noisier than whisper-silent Canadier CRJs, though. Performance-wise, this is more of a CRJ200 than it is A340, regardless of iteration.

Truth to be told, I wonder when Leadtek wukk launch "Airbus" for 8600 and 8800 series or whether we'll we have to wait for 9600 and 9800. From Nvidia, of course - ATI used this nomenclature ages ago. µ