best quiet video card?

Nate · Post by **Nate** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 2:37 pm

What is the most powerful but quiet video card? This is for a desktop machine, but I do want to play games, however very rarely. I don't want to go with a fanless card as I think they get too hot.

What is the most powerful card that has a quiet fan? I triad a Sapphire HD 3870 and it is horribly loud! I'm returning it, but for what?

I should mention, my budget is $100 to $200, but < $150 would be nice. I see this card is supposed to be quiet, though near the top of my budget:
XFX GX260NADBF GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition Core 216 896MB 448-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814150330

Here is another potential quiet card:
HIS H387QS512NP Radeon HD 3870 512MB 256-bit GDDR4 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported IceQ3 Video Card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814161218
Funny thing is it is slightly more expensive than the 4830:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814161267
The 4830 doesn't have as many reviews, so I'm not sure if it is quiet. I've read some reviews of similar cards with a slot cooler, and many say they are ridiculous loud at 100%, and some say their video card fan hits 100% easily.

K.Murx · Post by **K.Murx** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 3:12 pm

Why are you considering the 3870? The 3870 is maybe 20% faster than a 4670. You are looking at the wrong generation of cards.

With regards to the 4xxx-Generation, I am happy with my 4770 - it is reasonably fast (probably ~50% faster than a 3870), does not consume an inordinate amount of power and I can not hear the fan unless it spins up, which it rarely does. Ah, yes, $109-$119.

Nate · Post by **Nate** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 3:18 pm

That's why I'm asking!

So the plan is to get this one:
DIAMOND 4770PE5512 Radeon HD 4770 512MB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814103077

Is that the same fan solution you have? I'll give it a day or so and see if there is consensus.

Taxcheat · Post by **Taxcheat** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 6:23 am

You might also want to consider the Gigabyte 4850 passive at $129.

I'm also in the market for something quiet & fast like you, but I know absolutely nothing from personal experience. The comments seem to indicate this card is ok if you have excellent case airflow. I figure worst scenario you could somehow mount a low-speed 120mm fan on/near it and it'd be quiet. OK, stop reading if you want to stay on budget.

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 AC Accelero XXX looks like it could be made quieter than the stock card, but nobody seems to sell it. I emailed the company to see how to get one.

Another option I'm considering is getting a stock GTX260 or 275 card and seeing how tolerable the noise can be (apparently you can reflash the bios with a 30% fan speed at idle using 'nibitor'). If it's annoying, and I suspect it might be, the thermalright hr03-gtx is $94 shipped with heatsinks & fan. Sure, that busts the budget. Apparently, silence is expensive.

K.Murx · Post by **K.Murx** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 10:55 am

Nate wrote:Is that the same fan solution you have? I'll give it a day or so and see if there is consensus.

Yes. For the time being, the only card that does not follow the standard layout is made by XFX - but they have some very small fan on there, and IIRC someone wrote this solution is noisy.

Regarding the Gigabyte: Speed-wise the 4850 and a 4770 are the same with slightly overclocked 4770 RAM - which is rated by the manufacturer to run at 1000 Mhz, so there is no reason not to do the overclock.
So the comparison comes down to power draw (4770 wins by 20 W idle and ~40W load) and noise (passive card obviously wins).

zimer · Post by **zimer** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 11:25 am

Look into the arctic cooling accelero s1 rev 2 when looking at 4850 4770's and their stock passive options. No fan is always quieter just remember you'll need to have air flowing over the card from case fans.

Nate · Post by **Nate** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 4:36 pm

Thanks for all the feedback. I went back and forth looking for the right buy.

On the cheap end, the HIS 4670 IceQ is ~$70 and it runs cool and has a quiet slot cooler. This card is slightly less powerful than a 8800 GTS and less than half as powerful as a 4850.

Honestly the 4670 meets my needs, but I feel bad spending $70 when a little more can buy a lot more performance. So I tried to find a quiet card in the $150 range.

The 4850 is in this range, but consumes a lot of power at idle, which means higher temps. I got a lot of conflicting reports about noise. Some people said it is quiet at idle, some said loud. Everyone agrees it sounds like a truck at load.

The GTX 260 is ~$170 and slightly more powerful than the 4850. I got similar reports, it is either quiet or loud at idle and loud at load. Not very helpful! It consumes less power at idle than the 4850 so I would guess in general the 260 should be quieter at idle. It consumes more at load though.

At this point I almost went for a GTX 260. This machine is on 24/7 so I figured the efficiency at idle is better. I had trouble committing to a model though, since I couldn't find one where there was a consensus on quietness.

Eventually I found the EVGA GTX 275 and everyone seems to agree that this card is quiet at idle and also quiet at load. Impressive! I ended up buying this card for $220. I know I blew my budget of $100 to $200, but at least I know I will get something quiet, and I won't feel bad for spending money on a slow card. The 275 is about 20% faster than the 260 and 50% faster than a 4850.

halcyon · Post by **halcyon** » Mon Jul 20, 2009 2:33 am

Hi Nate,

can you please describe you experience with the EVGA GTX 275 once you've had it for a while.

How is it noise-wise at idle or on minimal desktop use? How about intensive 3D games?

As for the difficulty of finding quiet(ish) fast performing cards, it is indeed a mystery. Galaxy makes one, Inno3D makes one, but you can't get these almost anywhere except maybe parts of Asia.

I'd gladly pay up to 60EUR more for out-of-the-box cooler/quieter card that saved me the hassle of buying/installing/testing a third party aftermarket cooler. I've installed several of those and it's always a gray hairs causing exercise :)

Nate · Post by **Nate** » Mon Jul 20, 2009 11:40 am

Sure. It is quiet! So much quieter than my 3870. It spends almost all of its time on the desktop in Windows 7, so that fan is at whatever is the default. I hear it runs the fan slow and consequentially the card hot. Some people turn up the idle fan speed, but I'm sure it is fan. So it is very quiet at idle. For load, I have only played Supreme Commander a few times, and the fan never kicked into high gear even with max settings (16Q AA at 1920x1200). Games last ~45 minutes. Maybe a newer game would cause the fan to turn up, I don't know.

It is very quiet and super powerful!

kiwijunglist · Post by **kiwijunglist** » Mon Jul 20, 2009 10:26 pm

lots of people recommend 4670.

from my reading powercolor 4670 is queiter than his 4670 iceq

HIS IceQ Pro = 24.3 dbA @ Idle -> 29 dbA @ Full load
Powercolor = 21 dbA @ Idle -> 24.2 dbA @ Full Load

swinster · Post by **swinster** » Tue Jul 21, 2009 4:44 am

Hey nate, does the 274 you have support output via HDMI?

Nate · Post by **Nate** » Tue Jul 21, 2009 11:03 am

swinster, nope, it has two DVI ports and svideo, no HDMI.

edan · Post by **edan** » Wed Jul 29, 2009 1:27 pm

Nate wrote:swinster, nope, it has two DVI ports and svideo, no HDMI.

My EVGA GTX 260 has two DVI ports, but it included a DVI->HDMI adaptor and supports HDMI audio output via an included SPDIF connector. The 275 didn't come with it?

How quiet is the rest of your machine? At 40%, my EVGA 260's fan makes a faint high pitched whining that I can distinctly hear above my 3 S-FLEX E's at 7-8V. At 25% I can't hear it, but I haven't monitored temps during a long gaming session...

If your 275 has a better fan, maybe I'll sell off my 260 and get the 275

Nate · Post by **Nate** » Wed Jul 29, 2009 2:04 pm

Hard to say if my 275 is quieter than your 260. I haven't messed with fan speeds or anything since it is very quiet already. My Antec P180 case has 3 120mm fans set to low (they each have a low-med-hi switch) and the CPU has an additional 120mm, mobo controlled. The computer purrs quietly, I definitely can't tell what is the video card and what is the case.

Not sure if it came with that adapter. I just tossed the bag of stuff it came with into a box. :p Even if it did, a DVI->HDMI adapter isn't able to pass audio (obviously) nor HDCP for watching protected content.

davidrees · Post by **davidrees** » Sun Aug 02, 2009 9:22 pm

I have had the Gigabyte Passive 4850 1GB for about 6 months now. It's a great card and I paid $100 more than the current price at Newegg. They carried it a while back, but discontinued it - I can't tell if this is a different rev of the card or what.

In short, this is the best solution for all but the most hard core gamers among the hard core.

I have an Intel 5200 running at 3.5Ghz and this card - I usually play at 1600x1200 and I get fantastic performance even in the latest games.

Fallout 3 runs silky smooth, same with CoD4 and CoD World at War.

Crysis might be a bit of a challenge, but everything else is great.

I run a 450W Corsair PS - zero problems with power or stability.

edan · Post by **edan** » Mon Sep 07, 2009 8:35 pm

Nate wrote:Hard to say if my 275 is quieter than your 260. I haven't messed with fan speeds or anything since it is very quiet already. My Antec P180 case has 3 120mm fans set to low (they each have a low-med-hi switch) and the CPU has an additional 120mm, mobo controlled. The computer purrs quietly, I definitely can't tell what is the video card and what is the case.

Perhaps it is exactly the same amount of noise, without the annoying whining noise mine makes. I've heard that perhaps all the GTX 200 series (or w/e this generation is called) use the same stock cooling devices, which kinda makes sense.

Nate wrote: Not sure if it came with that adapter. I just tossed the bag of stuff it came with into a box. :p Even if it did, a DVI->HDMI adapter isn't able to pass audio (obviously) nor HDCP for watching protected content.

My receiver doesn't have HDMI, so I can't test that empircally. However, my Windows 7 audio controls show "SPDIF output (HDMI)" separate from the motherboard's SPDIF optical out, and it would seem a bit ridiculous to include the adaptor on the card and not support it... Not that manufacturer's aren't known to be ridiculous at times.

However, to your other claim about HDCP, I just finished watching a Blu-Ray using PowerDVD connected via DVI->HDMI adaptor to my 1080p projector. Not only did it look great (the occassional stutter aside, still working on that), the NVidia Control Panel exclaimed "Your graphics card (GTX 260) and display (Epson PJ) are HDCP compliant!"

Anyway, I just wanted to pipe in that the HDCP issue was not a problem using DVI. And I was just using a standard DVI->HDMI adapter that I bought separately. Perhaps you need the one the came in the box to pass audio, as I said, I have no way to test atm.

I'm still on the fence to sell my whiny 260 and pick up a 275 based on your comments, though, so, thanks for that

septimus · Post by **septimus** » Tue Sep 15, 2009 1:26 pm

This might be the fastest passively cooled card available today:

http://www.bfgtech.com/bfge98512gthe.aspx