Has anyone had experience with the XFX Zalman series cards? I'm looking at the XFX GTS 250 Zalman edition and the HIS Radeon HD 5670. I know from reviews and comments here that the HIS IceQ series are quiet, and the XFX shouldbe. It looks like they're using the old style flower form factor Zalman, which for CPU coolers is now a little dated.
Performance wise, I think these cards are pretty close to a push.
XFX GTS 250 Zalman edition or HIS Radeon HD 5670
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Re: XFX GTS 250 Zalman edition or HIS Radeon HD 5670
Can't say much about the specific cards, but a GTS 250 is quite a bit faster than a HD5670. It is, however, old tech with more than twice the power draw. And at this point, I really wouldn't recommend a GTS 250 no matter what. HD5670 is fairly low power and should be easy to cool. If you're looking more into something the performance of a GTS 250, try GTS 450 or HD5750/HD5770 instead. Not only are these faster (and newer with a better feature set) but they also have lower power draw than GTS 250.guiness wrote:Has anyone had experience with the XFX Zalman series cards? I'm looking at the XFX GTS 250 Zalman edition and the HIS Radeon HD 5670. I know from reviews and comments here that the HIS IceQ series are quiet, and the XFX shouldbe. It looks like they're using the old style flower form factor Zalman, which for CPU coolers is now a little dated.
Performance wise, I think these cards are pretty close to a push.
Thanks for the thoughts.
You're right, performance wise, the GTS 250 is better than the 5670. A look at some scores seems to put it around 30% faster for most apps. I also didn't realize how much more power the 250 drew, especially at idle.
The 5750 looks interesting, I'm not sure I need it. Dual DVI out would be the reason to go with it - I run two monitors, currently running my second over the O/B vga.
I see from a thread here that there were some problems with power draw at idle There are a lot of nice offering with that chip, looking at the Saphire Vapor-X and the the power color models (although they seem to have the idle power problems)
You're right, performance wise, the GTS 250 is better than the 5670. A look at some scores seems to put it around 30% faster for most apps. I also didn't realize how much more power the 250 drew, especially at idle.
The 5750 looks interesting, I'm not sure I need it. Dual DVI out would be the reason to go with it - I run two monitors, currently running my second over the O/B vga.
I see from a thread here that there were some problems with power draw at idle There are a lot of nice offering with that chip, looking at the Saphire Vapor-X and the the power color models (although they seem to have the idle power problems)