highest performance fanless video card?
Nov 28, 2004 at 6:20 PM Post #2 of 21
It depends on what you mean by "well". You're not gonna get 1600x1200 with 4xaa out of it. If you're content playing at 1024x768 then yeah it should do fine from the benchmarks I've seen.

For what it's worth, I can't hear the fan on my 6800GT over the noise that the watercooling fans make (and they are pretty damn silent compared to my old air-cooling cpu fan setups). That being said, you might want to check out the 6600GT. Performance is spectacular for the price, and the fan on it is pretty tiny (and I would assume pretty quiet).

[H]ard|ocp 6600GT preview
 
Nov 28, 2004 at 6:23 PM Post #3 of 21
A 9600XT, if you have at least 512 megs of ram, and an athlon xp 2800+ or better, will run half life 2 fine at 1280x1024 at a mix of medium and high detail settings.
 
Nov 28, 2004 at 6:24 PM Post #4 of 21
tiny fan usually results in pretty annoying noise, go for some aftermarket passive videocard cooler like Zalman or such, it's worth it..
 
Nov 28, 2004 at 6:28 PM Post #5 of 21
The NV5 silencer is barely audible (I have one on my 6800GT). If you're looking for higher performance, I'd recommend going with a higher end card and one of the Arctic Cooling silencers.
 
Nov 28, 2004 at 6:35 PM Post #6 of 21
Quote:

Originally Posted by Glassman
tiny fan usually results in pretty annoying noise, go for some aftermarket passive videocard cooler like Zalman or such, it's worth it..


Can you tell me what card you're speaking about in particular, because in my experience it's been the other way round?
 
Nov 28, 2004 at 9:30 PM Post #8 of 21
Quote:

Originally Posted by Skarecrow
Can you tell me what card you're speaking about in particular, because in my experience it's been the other way round?


Well, it's just a fan generalization. Small fans are required to spin at a higher RPM to produce decent airflow, whereas larger fans can spin slower while pushing often times more airflow, depending on the sizes of the fans compared.
 
Nov 28, 2004 at 9:37 PM Post #9 of 21
Quote:

Originally Posted by Glassman
tiny fan usually results in pretty annoying noise, go for some aftermarket passive videocard cooler like Zalman or such, it's worth it..


Indeed, the sound on of the little fan on my 9800pro is really annoying, so be warned. My zalman will arrive one of these days and costs 40€ more...
The fan is at least twice as loud as my original dell dimension 8300 which is the most silent pc I heard so far (haven't heard a really quiet pc yet).

The zalman heatsink can be applied to some cards without the optional fan. For a 9800 the fan is recommended (20dbA at low speed) and the card can be overclocked too.
 
Nov 29, 2004 at 1:00 AM Post #10 of 21
The problem is that this computer will be sitting close to me while I listen to music(with K1000's about as open as it gets), as I have nowhere else to put it. Therefore, maximum, absolute, no holds barred silence is key. If I can't get performace, I'll just settle on playing at lower resolution :p

Is there any higher performing fanless card(if it can be made fanless without too much more money/inconvenience that also works) than the 9600xt?
 
Nov 29, 2004 at 4:05 AM Post #12 of 21
How big of a case are we talking?

Zalman has this solution (which I can only call a "thing") which can passively cool lesser cards--some assembly required. Hotter cards require a fan. I've also seen various CPU heatsinks affixed to video cards, the most excessive example of which is a tie between a copper 4U Xeon cooler and a Zalman CNPS7000B-Cu.
I've also heard that removing the screen from a Leadtek 6800-series card makes them damn near silent, but that was from an enthusiast, so take with liberal amounts of salt.
If you're hardcore about total silence, have no need to move your computer around with any amount of regularity and aren't short on cash, there's always the Reserator. Toss a couple passthrough blocks (Zalman makes those as well) onto your video card and northbridge if necessary, and you're set.


---


Then you'll realise that you also need/want a fanless PSU...
 
Nov 29, 2004 at 7:07 AM Post #13 of 21
Video card chips (GPUs), have been getting faster than they need to be lately, like CPUs have been for the last 2 years or so. The last generation of GPUs is sufficient to run the newest games at high resolutions. The current generation is overkill (I know, I have a 6800GT that I run at ultra speeds. I play doom3 @ 1280x1024 with 4xaa and 8xaf, and I play World of Warcraft at 1800x1440 with 4xaa and 8xaf). So the mainstream cards from last generation, being the cards you are most likely to find can operate with a heatsink only, should be more than sufficient if performance is secondary to silence.
 
Nov 29, 2004 at 9:49 AM Post #14 of 21
You're better off asking at forums.silentpcreview.com.

But being as it is that you asked here, I'll asnwer anyway:

Gigabyte 6600GT (GV-NX66T128VP) PCI-E
http://www.giga-byte.com/VGA/Product...X66T128VP.htm#

Gigabyte 6800 (GV-N68128DH) AGP
http://www.giga-byte.com/VGA/Product...V-N68128DH.htm

TUL PowerColor SCS X700XT PCI-E
http://www.tul.com.tw/eflyer/SCS_X700XT.pdf

All of the above are passive, as requested (i.e. no fan whatsoever).

None of the passive sinks (Aerocool VM-101, Zalman ZM80D) are good enough to passively cool a X800XT/PE or 6800GT/U. There's just too much heat to be transferred passively.

However, a ZM80D + a really slowly (+5V) running Panaflo/Nexus/Adda fan can work wonders on a non-overclocked X800XT/6800GT.

Also, do remember that AC VGA Cooler has an integrated fan. Once that goes south, you have to discard the whole cooler. As far as being silent, they are far from that.

regards,
halcyon
 
Nov 29, 2004 at 11:35 AM Post #15 of 21
buy any card, and then buy this

zm80d_hp_c_p.jpg


dowxp has the zm-80C model. the D model is more efficient (in cooling) as it has 2 heatpipes. also prob need to get the additional ZM-0P1 fan if the vid card is a higher end one.
 
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