Which card, silence a priority..

[alaricljs]

I'm looking at building a system that I want to be pretty high powered, but as quiet as possible. I know it's unlikely I'll be able to match my HTPC (dead silent at 1m), but I want to get close.

As for the rest of the box I'm looking at E6600 w/ Ultra 120 on a DS3 inside a P182 (or P180B if it takes too long). I'm trying to keep the video card in the $300 range, but I am flexible.

I haven't been playing games because I have had a crappy laptop for a few years now that overheats and crashes on any game. I enjoyed Quake 3, Unreal Tournament... wanted to play with Half-life but again, crappy laptop.

I'm heavily leaning toward a 24" LCD but I will probably sit on that decision until xmas. I have a 19" Samsung LCD.

So there's the back story. I've been looking at the XFX 7950GT XXX since it's passively cooled, but don't want to short change myself on performance either. I haven't been able to find a good comparison between this card and low-end 8800 GTS's.

Although while writing this I thought of another possibility. Get the 7950gt now, move it the the HTPC when I upgrade my TV and get something new for my main rig... So how quiet can you make a 8800GTS without cooking it?

 

[thilanliyan]

I have the 8800GTS 640mb right now. It's fairly silent at about 70% fan but I can definitely hear it passed that. AT about 50% fan I can't really hear it over the fans on my P180. You probably won't even need an HR-03 to keep it cool.

I say forget the 7950...what's the point? Are you going to game on your HTPC if you move the 7950 into there?

 

[alaricljs]

I'm currently playing some games on the HTPC since it doesn't crash like my lappy. It's hooked to a plain 27" TV so 800x600 is the res. Right now it's got a Celeron D 330 and a Asus EN7300LE which is adequate for playing whatever Geometry Wars clone I d/l'd and can't remember the name of... The Seasonic PSU I have in it never ramps up it's fan and I have a 120mm Antec exhaust set to low speed sucking air across my Ninja.

I don't foresee playing any FPS on the HTPC because I like very crisp details there. I might play some NWN on it tho. The next TV would be a 1080p of some sort however.

 

[thilanliyan]

If the 7300LE is sufficient then leave it as is and just get the 8800GTS if you must have a card now.

Another option would be to hold off the 7950 because the midrange (ie. cheaper) G80 cards as well as DX10 ATI cards are coming out in mid-late April.

 

[thilanliyan]

If the 7300LE is sufficient then leave it as is and just get the 8800GTS if you must have a card now.

Another option would be to hold off the 7950 because the midrange (ie. cheaper) G80 cards as well as DX10 ATI cards are coming out in mid-late April.