SPCR

X1900XTX: Pointless because the X1900XT is 97% of this card and yet much cheaper these days.

7900GTX: Way too expensive for what it offers, especially considering the X1900XT costs considerably less yet outperforms it in just about every game.

X1900XT: goshawfully loud and runs very hot. the epitome of what NOT to get for a quiet PC.

X1800XT: similar design to X1900XT.

7900GT: almost perfect except for the stock fan being one of the dinky ones that is not only noisier than the one on the 7900GTX but also tend to be very short-lived.

7600GT: Asus offers an over-priced silent version but as is typical with passive cooling on GPUs, it runs hotter and thus will have a shorter lifespan. On top of this it's not exactly a star performer in recent games at the resolutions I would game at. The stock fan on the reference cooler is again the dinky little, noisy, short-lived style common to most other video cards out there such as the X1900GT and many other older ATi models..

7600GS: Made for passive cooling, but also poor performance.

My current X800XL w/ Zalman cooler (it came like that stock - Sapphire model) is more powerful than the 7600GS and also the 7600GT I believe.

I want to upgrade to improve gaming performance but have little to no options currently it seems. This is frustrating.

More so since I have no interest in taking apart a $250-300 product, risking damage to it, just to put an aftermarket cooler on it that rarely fits right anyway without further effort and modification.

What I would ideally want:

The 7900GT to come with the 7900GTX's cooler. $260 is fine. 7900GT performance is fine. 7900GTX's cooling setup is fine. Combine those and I'd be sold.

well, I dunno bout ati cards, but using rivatuner on the 7900gt if your not overclocking you can just reduce the fan speed to 25%, I did that on my 6800nu, now its silent....cant hear it...or you can get a nvsilencer for the 7900gt....its only like 25$...

my understanding was the 7900GT fan was like the 7800GT where it could not be slowed down even using Rivatuner. I could be wrong?

I have a Zalman VF-900 sitting on my 7800GT, installation was amazingly easy. I have the fan lead attached to one of the switched channels on my Zalman fan controller. I just leave it at 5v and even on my overclocked card temps are just fine.

Video cards have always had crap coolers on them. Mainly because they use 40 or 60mm fans most of the time. And they are incapable of pushing any decent airflow at 1000rpm or less like SPCR is accustom to. The only option is to find a stock fanless card that probably is midrange at best. Or get a higher end card and research to find the cooler in this range and put a zalman or similar on it. It sucks but it is where we are now. Some cards come with stock quieter coolers but you pay a premium for that. Get a evga 7900gt and put a zalman 900 on it.

Have you looked at the Asus 7900GT Top? From what I've read in reviews it is the quietest and coolest version of this card and costs just a little over $300.00.[/b]

You should understand though that the 7900GTX cooler is not as great as it seems. Yes it is quiet, but it blows air both OUT the case and back INTO the case. It goes in through the fan and then splits in different directions. You probably would be fine with just a 7900GT and getting a NV5v3.

Have you looked at HIS 1900XT iceq3? Supposedly it runs pretty quiet and of course you get the 1900XT performance.

I got an eVGA 7900GT KO a couple of months ago and couldn't be happier. I knew the stock 7900GT cooler would be noisy which is why I bought this model of card, it has a very nice, quiet cooler. Even though overclocked, the temp doesn't get very far above 50 C under heavy load. The heatsink also cools the memory chips unlike the stock cooler so you can run the memory at very high speeds with no problems.

It's worth noting that of all the current high end graphics cards the 7900GT has the lowest power consumption, so it doesn't need an extra huge cooler.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814130015

I didn't realize that cooler is any quieter, Ezza. That's interesting. Generally the slim design coolers are all pretty noisy since they are small fans.

I'll look into that. Btw, I believe the new eVGA models have an 8 in the part number instead of the 6. ie, the 584 model replaces the 564. The old ones had issues.

For a good review of this EVGA card and the Asus N7900GT TOP, including relative merits of their non-stock coolers:
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/gef ... efault.asp
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/gef ... quieter.

acaurora wrote:You probably would be fine with just a 7900GT and getting a NV5v3.

This combination is what I'm running and it works fine. Note that the NV5R3 is not designed to fit the 7900GT. I had to make two mods. The cutout in the shroud above the fan power plug socket needs to be enlarged a bit. And the shroud runs into the case back and needs to be shortened.