Quietest, coolest Dual Link DVI card

Fun Guy

Golden Member
Oct 25, 1999
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I am building a new power machine around the Dell 3" monitor, which requires a dual-link DVI card to support its 2560 x 1600 resolution.

I've noticed that most dual link cards are pretty expensive, and the reviews on the Egg say they run loud and hot. I am not really into gaming but will be doing video editing on this machine, so I don't need the power that a lot of these cards offer.

Does anyone have any experience or can anyone recommend a card that is cool, quiet, and fairly cheap?
 

Fun Guy

Golden Member
Oct 25, 1999
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I've always liked Matrox and ATI for 2D work. Is NVidia just as good as ATI for 2D now?
 

hans007

Lifer
Feb 1, 2000
20,212
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you could probably just get a passively cooled 8400gs or 8500gt. or a 7300le or something like that.
 

darkshadow1

Senior member
Nov 2, 2000
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if you wanted to stick with ATI, you could go for a passively cooled 2400/2600 series card - a number of them came out recently...they'd be comparable to the 8500/8600 nvidia cards overall for non-gaming tasks.
 

hans007

Lifer
Feb 1, 2000
20,212
18
81
i actually think the 7300le might be the better idea if you choose nvidia. the 8400gs apparently runs hot since it has a lot of transistors (all the HD decode stuff) so if you dont acre about h.264 decoding then its probably better to get the 7300le since it seems to run cooler.
 

ninja098

Junior Member
Oct 31, 2005
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With DVI the 2D quality will be the same for any manufacturer. It's only an issue with VGA because of low quality DACs that some cards have.
 

betasub

Platinum Member
Mar 22, 2006
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Originally posted by: Fun Guy
I am building a new power machine around the Dell 3" monitor

Please tell me that it's really a 30" monitor.... ah, res of 2560 x 1600 gives it away :cool:

 

zephyrprime

Diamond Member
Feb 18, 2001
7,512
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Originally posted by: Fun Guy
I've always liked Matrox and ATI for 2D work. Is NVidia just as good as ATI for 2D now?
It's and irrelevant issue on a digital connection.

If you really want quiet, get a passively cooled card.

 

Fun Guy

Golden Member
Oct 25, 1999
1,210
5
81
Originally posted by: zephyrprime
Originally posted by: Fun Guy
I've always liked Matrox and ATI for 2D work. Is NVidia just as good as ATI for 2D now?
It's and irrelevant issue on a digital connection.

If you really want quiet, get a passively cooled card.

Any suggestions?
 

L00PY

Golden Member
Sep 14, 2001
1,101
0
0
Originally posted by: Fun Guy
Originally posted by: zephyrprime
Originally posted by: Fun Guy
I've always liked Matrox and ATI for 2D work. Is NVidia just as good as ATI for 2D now?
It's and irrelevant issue on a digital connection.

If you really want quiet, get a passively cooled card.

Any suggestions?
Sure.

If you're not gaming, the first / cheapest hit ought to be fine provided you have enough system RAM for video editing (be sure not to let the video card steal any memory).