New Video Card for my pc - probably a week away from buying it

[Jason Brian Merrill]

Right now i have an Ati x1550 -

my pc is:

Q6600
abit p35 pro
8 gigs RAM Corsair

running win7 x64

I am looking for the best card i can get within these balances:

- quiet
- cheap
- dual head
- compatible with Dx10, and the motherboard
- powerful for playing games



I need the best balance of all of these, with the primary focus being quiet and dual head, since the main point of the PC is a DAW, not a gaming device.

If there is no card that is much better than this without being quiet and dual head, i dont see the point. I want something i can play Dragon Age origins or Star Wars force unleashed or something, if possible.

hehe.

[Jim Roseberry]

Originally Posted by Jason Brian Merrill

Right now i have an Ati x1550 -

my pc is:

Q6600
abit p35 pro
8 gigs RAM Corsair

running win7 x64

I am looking for the best card i can get within these balances:

- quiet
- cheap
- dual head
- compatible with Dx10, and the motherboard
- powerful for playing games



I need the best balance of all of these, with the primary focus being quiet and dual head, since the main point of the PC is a DAW, not a gaming device.

If there is no card that is much better than this without being quiet and dual head, i dont see the point. I want something i can play Dragon Age origins or Star Wars force unleashed or something, if possible.

hehe.

Hi J,

If you want a video card with more juice for playing games, you can get a passive cooled 9800GT... but they're not particularly cheap.
A passive cooled 9500GT is probably a better balance of all the above.

Passive cooled ATI HD 4350 is also a good balance of all the above...


Jim Roseberry
www.studiocat.com
jim@studiocat.com

[Jason Brian Merrill]

thanks... I found alot of 9800GT but not sure which manufacturer to get or which are passively cooled. There are alot out there that say 9800GT hehe

I also wonder about the GTX - i can find a 512 model for under 200 but not sure about it....

[bullshark]

I would never buy a graphic card with a passive heatsink; they dissipate their heat inside the case and rely on your other fans and case airflow for cooling.

Newer graphic adapter are rear ported, get their heat outside the case and cage d'écureuil type fans aren't noisy.

And I don't like color rendition of nVidia board. My own 5200 was horribly inaccurate, and the 7600 on my friend computer is barely better.

With that said, I would suggest an ATI 4850 based card. It is what I'm running, color rendition is spot on, it is rear ported, DX10 compatible, reasonably cheap and the Catalyst 9.10 give me no grief at all on Vista pro x64.

[Brad]

I have bought passives before and I agree with Bullshark....never again.

I have an MSI 8800GT 512 overclocked. It is wonderful. It is very quiet but if soundlevels concern you you can get RivaTuner and control the fan.

The 9800 is the 8800 with a tiny bit of new lipstick.

[Jason Brian Merrill]

The card in question im going to buy seriously needs to be decently powerful. It doesnt have to run crysis, but i really want something decently robust, for my system, without paying more than 200 bucks... if possible...

ill compare the cards, anyone got any good benchmarking sites?

[bullshark]

Originally Posted by Jason Brian Merrill

The card in question im going to buy seriously needs to be decently powerful. It doesnt have to run crysis, but i really want something decently robust, for my system, without paying more than 200 bucks... if possible...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102858

[the all new rob]

Originally Posted by Jim Roseberry

Passive cooled ATI HD 4350 is also a good balance of all the above...

I just went that route myself. Too early to really tell you what I think of it. It was cheap though!

[Jason Brian Merrill]

Originally Posted by bullshark

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102858

yeah but how quiet is it compared to my x1550, which is pretty quiet... i think thats another card ill have to check comparisons of...

[bullshark]

Originally Posted by Jason Brian Merrill

yeah but how quiet is it compared to my x1550, which is pretty quiet... i think thats another card ill have to check comparisons of...

The fan speed is dynamic, so, unless they used very crappy bearings, or have poor fit of the enclosure parts, should be pretty much silent for DAW operation. The design is sound, the chip actually use less power than my 4850 and the fan is pretty big so it should not have to turn fast for regular use, and the air intake/exhaust appear efficiently designed.

In any case, let us know what you end up getting.

[dub3000]

I have a passive 8600gt and previously had a passive 6600gt. Both worked great. But I have a nice case with a very quiet and big fan in it.

[LCipher]

Originally Posted by Jim Roseberry

Hi J,
Passive cooled ATI HD 4350 is also a good balance of all the above...

Jim Roseberry
www.studiocat.com
jim@studiocat.com

+1

I've used the EAH 4350 (ATI) and GeForce 8400 (Nvidia) - both passive cooled and they work well w/o too much heat. I have a well cooled, quite box.

[dungbeetle]

Tom's Hardware is usually a good place to start:

Best PCIe Card: ~$90 To $190

[bullshark]

Tom's a bit behind thought. The 5770 I linked to is faster than the 4850 but consume less power, runs cooler, is smaller, has more memory, DX11 compatible and just a bit more money.
(hm, newegg just raised the price by ten buck since I first posted the link...I thought computer hardware prices was supposed to come down with time?!?)

[jonahex2099]

Originally Posted by bullshark

Tom's a bit behind thought. The 5770 I linked to is faster than the 4850 but consume less power, runs cooler, is smaller, has more memory, DX11 compatible and just a bit more money.
(hm, newegg just raised the price by ten buck since I first posted the link...I thought computer hardware prices was supposed to come down with time?!?)

Tom's is probably one of the worst sites to go to for up-to-date tech info - it was good when Tom actually owned it but he's been out of that picture for many years and every time the site changes ownership it just gets worse...

The 5770's a good card tho...'egg fluctuates pricing with demand and all the ATI 5000 series cards are in very high demand right now. I'm running an Asus 9600GT in my rig that's fanless but my case is also very well ventilated in my rack and I have three scythe s-flex 120mm fans in the thing keeping the air flowing really well...

[Malevol3nt]

You could do with the hackish way of buying a passive-cooled video card and then custom install an aftermarktet cooler.

By the way, the 9600GT (and maybe the 9500, since that's the later edition of the same card) is very noisy when you boot up the pc. The fans run on max speed until you enter windows when the drivers get loaded. A little annoyance if you like to boot often. The fans will run max speed on graphic-intensive games (with extreme settings I mean), so you might want to avoid active-cooled 9600 or 9500 series if you absolutely need silence while playing games. Honestly tho, I can't really hear the fans all that much most of the time. But I don't play Crysis..

Virtually all new-ish videocards are DX10 compatible and have dual-head video, it's not a speciality anymore these days. I own the 9600GT, but my next purchase is probably going to be one of those new ATI cards with eyefinity. Being able to run multiple (as in more than 2) displays on a single card without issues would be sweet.

Also, crossfire from ATI is a bit more flexible than SLI, from what I know. But I don't know much.

Edit: Maybe you should list some of the games you would like to play, and on which resolution?

[Jason Brian Merrill]

i dont need silence at all while playing games. I can care less. I just want it to be silent during audio work.

here are some games i like:

Star Wars Battlefront II (obviously no problem there even on the card i have now)
Force unleashed
Dragon Age origins
Racing games (need for speed)
Stuff like that i guess. I have a 22 inch monitor, widescreen.