I want a fanless video card. Which one is the best?

[ingeborgdot]

I am looking for a fanless vid card. I have checked newegg and found several. What makes a vid card good? I don't do much gaming but a little. Nothing too extreme though. The biggest thing I do is a lot of video editing and my wife likes to watch some 3d visualizations when listening to music. I was looking at a pci-e with 256 mg and found some from gigabyte and I think powercolor. What is your opinion on this? Thanks.

 

[unfalliblekrutch]

if all you're doing is 3d visualizations and stuff, go with whichever one fits your budget. THe brand doesnt matter as much as the actual chip the card uses. Video editing doesnt use the video card's 3d acceleration, so you need ram and processor speed for that, not GPU.

 

[blckgrffn]

Hit the gigabyte 128 meg 6600 for about $110, this thing will do anything 3d just fine 🙂

The 256 one that I have is great, plays BF2 at 1280*1024 at a solid 50+ FPS, and I think that it has more power that a 9800 Pro, potentially. I don't think that the price warrants going to the 256, but if that is what you want, I say go for it!

 

[tbradsha]

AFAIK, the Gigabyte X800 XL is the most powerful of the fan-less video cards. It is much better for gaming than the other cards mentioned, and it actually plays all current games very welll at high resolutions and with eye candy turned on. Also, compared to those other cards, the X800 XL has a much better chance of performing well with games released in 2006 and even 2007. It's currently just under $300 on newegg. Here's a description:

http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?id=1571&cid=3&pg=4

But if gaming is not a big concern, you can save a lot of cash by getting one of the other cards mentioned.


> What makes a vid card good?

When people on this forum compare video cards, they typically compare their performance in games. All other things being equal, the higher the framerate (frames per second or "FPS") for a given game or benchmark, the better the card. There are plenty of reviews on the internet that compare the framerates of different cards on different games. If a card can perform well in games, it's a good bet it can handle whatever other applications you throw at it. Also, in general, look for higher specs for core clock speed, memory speed, memory bit interface, amount of memory, type of memory, pixel pipelines, and vertex pipelines. But IMHO, measured framerates are more reliable performance indicators than specs.