Hi guys,

I would like to ask for help. I need a hardware recomendation. My Christmas gift to myself is arriving soon - a 30'' LCD from Dell.

I currently run my system on two 24'' monitors, also from Dell. Both are connected to a single Gigabyte SLI RADEON X800 XL.

The Gigabyte is totally silent and works great - it was recommended by the good people of this site about an year ago, and even though the MB is SLI (the Asus A8N) it was not necessary to buy a second video board. I simply connected one monitor the the DVI plug, the other one to the VGA plug, and it worked well with the single board.

I plan to run the 30'' either by itself, or with one of the 24'', if it does not look too weird.

My question is what to do about the video board. Dell says that monster "Requires a dual-link DVI-D graphics card" on this link:http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&l=en&cs=19&oc=W3007.

The gigabyte has only one DVI port. Btw, I have no idea why they would ask for two DVIs ports to connect to a single monitor, but that is kind of a sidetrack to the real problem.

So, what video board should I buy: A second SLI to work with the Gigabyte already there, or something to work by itself. And what model, assuming I still want the quietest and best around. Money is not too much of an issue, within reason.

Thanks for any help.

Hello,

Dual-link is different from dual-DVI. A dual-link DVI port looks like an ordinary port, except the graphics card can stuff double the signal through it. This is necessary for the 30" because of the large resolution...

I wasn't able to find if a X800XL has a dual-link DVI port, or not. If not, I think that a lot of nVidia's 7600 cards have dual-link. A lot are also fanless.

Thanks, qviri.

I see now that the old Gigabyte will have to go - you just made my 12-year old day..

I went to Gigabyte web site. That is what the people here recommended in the past, so I assume they are still a good choice. They have now two different kind of silent boards here.

Silent-pipe
and
Silent-pipe II

I do not know if the Silent-pipe IIis the way to go, or if I should stick to the older standard (or even with Gigabyte, for that matter). Any thoughts on that?

Thanks,

How about MSI 7950GT? It has two dual-link DVI's and it's passively cooled.

Thanks for the suggestion, Vaiski. I went there, and checked. I got a question -

What is the "good" NVidia chip to buy these days ? The link you posted says the MSI has the 7950GT, and I remember from past purchases that getting the right chipset was something big...

Quick question, what are you using the computer for? Demanding 3-D games? Primarily office apps? CAD, 3-D modelling?

I use it primarily for work, but the box also has an active night life as a game machine for my son.

So, for what I do, I need a bunch of telnet and RDP sessions open simultaneously; lots of real estate being important. For what he does, it is nice - bit I am not paying top dollar for it - to have good muscles in the card.

I have been reading on the 7950 and the 7600 chipsets - which seem to be the best I could find fanless. Not quite sure of what to do yet, though.

Thanks for asking,

prices of 7900xx(x) are going down as we speak - no wonder as 8800 chipsets are hitting the market - so any of these will be a good choice, 7950 passive seem nice enough (personally, i'd go for msi)

if you feel like considering active cooling on your card i'd suggest looking at 7900gtx. yes, it has a fan, a 92mm, but it's v quiet - the quietest actively cooled card i've ever had, quieter than any active aftermarket vga cooler i heard, too.
at minimum (25%) the card is next to inaudible as the fan runs at about 600+ rpm. you really need to stuck your face in it to hear it, open the box and so on. it's quieter than my seasonic s12.
when i play sth heavy like oblivion i crank it up to 50% and it's still very quiet. at 25% in idle temps are about 50-52 degrees - which is good for such a strong (and oc'ed) chip. i've never seen this card reach 70, even if the fan is at 50% (which is still v quiet). naturally, performance simply rocks.

well, just another option to consider...

Kater,

Thanks - good tip on the silent fan - that is why these forums are so cool. I would not dream of buying a fan board without input cuch as these.

i assume you've already taken care of the noisy little f....an on your mobo? make sure your new vga will not interfere with your nb cooler. if, however, you've not changed it (naaaah, you probably have) then thermalright hr-05 sli is the way to go - i tried both standard and sli versions and the sli gives you much better options, and is simply a must if you have a long and/or thick vga. the standard is ok if you have 7600gt - a shor card, but anything bigger will be in the way

well, ok, so i'm not 100% sure nb on your and my mobos are placed similarly ("under" vga) but it's probable - so just take it into consideration as well

You might as well wait until the Dell 30" arrives before buying another video card. Then test it with the one you have, if it works (if you can successfully display the monitor's max res. and bit depth then it works.), you're all done. If it doesn't work then buy a new graphics card. Something like that MSI 7950GT would be a good choice because your son will want a lot of graphics oomph to play on such a big monitor.

For Nvidia, it's pretty easy, they were nice enough to post a chart on their website:

http://www.nvidia.com/page/technology_e ... d_gpu.html

ALL of the 7-series and 8 series have at least one dual link DVI port; some have two, but it sounds like you're only buying one 30" display and would at most plug one of the 24" ones into the other DVI port, so any 7 or 8-series would work for you.

As for ATI, from what I can tell, none of the X800 XL series chips had dual-link DVI, so they'd support none higher than 1920x1200 through a single DVI port. On the topic of the 7600.. I would never buy the 7600 if you're doing gaming, especially on a monster screen. I have a 7800GT and it's barely fast enough to do good gaming at 1600x1200. The 7900GT, GTO, or 7950 would be better choiced for gaming. The 7900GT should be the cheapest and thus quietest of the bunch.

uhhhh, what do you mean by that? i assume you're talking about cards with active cooling, right? then i'd say gto/gtx cards will be quietest - just take a look at their coolers - massive, heavy, large & slow spinning fans, some of the air will even be exhausted from the case (just some)