Hello people i am in two minds bewteen upgrading to a 9800 pro or a 5900 ultra. I am not too bothered abit which can give me better eye candy.
I just want one which i can cool almost passively.
9800 pro vs 5900 ultra (which can be cooled easier)
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Re: 9800 pro vs 5900 ultra (which can be cooled easier)
9800 Pro.Pendu wrote:Hello people i am in two minds bewteen upgrading to a 9800 pro or a 5900 ultra. I am not too bothered abit which can give me better eye candy.
I just want one which i can cool almost passively.
5900 Ultra.
As you can see, the Ultra uses more power. My factory overclocked 9800 Pro could be used together with a Zalman 80C without a fan. No case fans. Both models are outdated though, especially the 5900 Ultra. I'm not saying that you need a faster card, but newer ones are much more efficient. A X800 Pro runs much cooler in idle for instance. 9600 is very low power.
If you like Arctic Cooling Silencers...
I'm using a HIS Excalibur 9800, which comes stock with a Arctic Cooling Silencer. At low setting, it's very quiet.
According to this test, the 9800 Pro still performs decent.
A more efficient solution, might be a Galaxy 6800, also with a standard mounted Silencer. This card performs better, and at lower heat dissapation. However, the pwm fan controller gives some more noise. It seems some people have succes with reducing the fan speed with a FanMate.
An advantage of the Galaxy card, is that the memory is also cooled with the Silencer - the 9800 Pro memory (and other components) generates considerable heat, which the Silencer dont move out of the case. Whatever you do, decent case airflow is needed with the 9800 Pro.
I'm using a HIS Excalibur 9800, which comes stock with a Arctic Cooling Silencer. At low setting, it's very quiet.
According to this test, the 9800 Pro still performs decent.
A more efficient solution, might be a Galaxy 6800, also with a standard mounted Silencer. This card performs better, and at lower heat dissapation. However, the pwm fan controller gives some more noise. It seems some people have succes with reducing the fan speed with a FanMate.
An advantage of the Galaxy card, is that the memory is also cooled with the Silencer - the 9800 Pro memory (and other components) generates considerable heat, which the Silencer dont move out of the case. Whatever you do, decent case airflow is needed with the 9800 Pro.
Last edited by Thomas on Mon Nov 21, 2005 3:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
6600GT should also be a great choice, or maybe a 6800.
I forgot to link to the test I mentioned above, so here it is: http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?i ... direct=yesPendu wrote:thanks for the advice i'm just abit tight on money at the moment. I was gonna get a second hand 9800 pro or 5900 ultra as they would be in my bidget range if bough second hand.
As mentioned the memory chips gets quite warm on the 9800Pro, so if you use a Zalman heatpipe thingy, or the likes, I would recommend have a slow fan on it, because the ram chips is pretty closed in between the heatsink.