new graphics card

i'm trying to quieten my pc down. I've just replaced the standard Intel cpu fan with a Zalman 120mm job which is a huge improvement but I also noted that my Creative GF3 Ti200 card has a tiny little fan which is kicking out a huge amount of noise. Bearing in mind the pc is in my bedroom and sometimes i need to sleep with it on, and also bearing in mind the rapidly falling price of graphics cards it looks worthwhile to change it.

The Ti200 has been overclocked- core clock to 184mhz and memory clock to 463mhz

Things the new card needs to have:
DVi output for tft monitor
AGP pref 8x for my Abit mobo
fanless
an improvement over the last one...doesn't need to be outrageously fast though. The Ti200 is actually more or less as fast as I need atm.

Lets hear your suggestions, thanks !

 

how much you looking to spend?

if your looking for a agp card go second hand an you will get a good deal right now. there is fanless version of the ati 9600 or 9600se which is a good card.

 

if you are happy with the card you have, have you thought about replacing the fan on it? they usually install really cheap and nasty fans on these cards and for £10-£20 you can replace it with something quieter or remove the fan altogether, have a look atZalman fans at quiet pc my mate has put on a "Zalman ZM80D-HP Silent Dual Heatpipe VGA Heatsink" on his ATI 9800 pro with little effort, in fact I'm considering doing this myself as my graphics card fan is starting to rattle like a beatch, mines a nvidia TI4400.

 

well its only got a 30mm or so fan on it although having said that there is a wire on the fan for it to be disconnected. Not sure about removing it, let alone replacing a 30mm fan with a 80mm- how would I attach the 80mm fan anyway? Surely it has to be in physical contact with the chip on the graphics card?

Stuart- thanks dude- kind of advice I was after- and sort of price too- sub £50 Only problem is that all the 9600s on ebay have fans

 

You can easily passive cool a Ti200. Here's my old one (now in my brother's machine):



In that config it would happily overclock from 175/400 to 235/495.

 

isaac

why r u taking photo's of bits of yer pc?

J

 

ok so how would i do that?
this is mine

 

what about this?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=27387&item=6788583430&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW

this is the same one new i think but not 100% sure.

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/prod...2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=49372

 

cheers Stuart, thats going in the watch list You think it'd be an improvement over what I have? I think I got the Creative around 4 years ago

 

A Radeon 9600 should happily trounce a GF3Ti200 performance-wise. I'm tempted to move to something like a fanless GF6600 myself - am currently running an extremely noisy GF4 Ti4200 here.

 

yes its better i went from on board to a 9600pro (which i got for £13.50 or £12.50 long story) an it was a lot better for games.

 

If I were to buy a new card I wouldn't go for a 9600, especially the lower models. I got a 9600 256mb XT (top model) and even overclocked it is only just good enough to run Half Life 2 in 1024X768 and full detail. If you were FPS hungry you would be a bit disappointed. So, as it can only just run the latest games it doesn't have a long life ahead of it. I would go for a 9800 Pro or XT.

The big F-off Zalman heatpipe GFX cooler works great. I put one in a machine for a client and even though it only has one fan for cooling in the case via the power supply, it runs nice and cool. That was with a GeForce something, which puts out more heat than the 9800 I think.

 

if he finds a GF3 Ti200 good enought right now then i think a 9600 would be powerfull enough.

you havent told us the rest of the spec of your pc?

 

oh sorry...p4 2.8ghz prescott, 1gb ddr400 ram, win2k

 

If you are going for something passive and you are a bit short of spare slots then it may be worth examining if the passive heat sink does not block an adjacent slot as some kit can now be considered as 2 slot cards.

PS you might want to spend a few mins wading through this table of cards from Tom.

 

The big blue Zalman one did block the first PCI slot on the ASUS board I had in that machine.

Stuart, if you meant me, the rest of my system is a 3.5GHz P4, 1.5GB dual channel DDR 333 and an ASUS P4P800 Deluxe mobo.

If you are happy with the Ti200 then just change the heat sink. I put a silent Zalman one on mine before I got the 9600.

 

Hi Rory

You just pull off your exsisting heat sink / fan an install the Zalman as per their instructions, they provide all the fittings, and on your card you could probably run it completely fanless.

 

If you are talking about the Ti200, I wouldn't be too sure about that idea. I had one of these* on mine, it ran very hot and when overclocked it became unstable because of the heat. The standard heatsink on your card does seem quite substantial though so you may be alright. You can also underclock it don't forget!

*

 

No, I wasn't thinking of that, I was thinking of this.

This should do the job very nicely.

 

i didnt mean you but that is a nice pc you got there.

rory - removing the fan from your current card is a good idea but you have a decent system there an your graphis card is holding it back. if i was you i would give a go of passive cooling your card an see how it works out an if it goes wrong just buy a new card like the fanless 9600.