I need a silent video card with hdmi, dvi, and something that is relatively inexpensive. I will be doing light gaming at most (almost none if i am it will be old school) so i don't need a great gaming card but i do work with tons of photos (super high quality) and videos with my business and would need a card that can handle that. I will also have a dual 24 inch monitor setup so that will need to work as well. Any recommendations out there? thanks

Eric

You want an AMD/ATI card if you care about video quality. Their scaling and anti-aliasing is considered the best.

For two high-resolution monitors, you would want a card that is mid-range. I would suggest the AMD HD 5570, 6570, or 6670. They are all in the $60-100 range. The 6670 will be the fastest of these cards, but most designs will use an active, fan-based, cooler.

This PowerColor AX6670 1GBD5-H Radeon HD 6670 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 is currently $95 ($75 after MIR).

The 5570 & 6570 cards are more likely to use passive cooling, as they run 20-30% slower.

The HIS H657H1G Radeon HD 6570 1GB 128-bit DDR3 is just $75.

This HIS H557HO1G Radeon HD 5570 1GB 128-bit DDR3 is only $60. The HD 5570 is not going to do as good a job at decoding video as the HD 6000 series cards.



Just like above, the cards that are best in descending order are: AMD HD 6670, AMD HD 6570, AMD HD 5570.

I have a passive HD 5570 in one of my computers, and it runs games well at 1280x720 or 1024x768. My main computer uses an AMD HD 5770 to run games at 1900x1080.

An adder to the above - for Photoshop, any of the above cards will work...but I'd lean toward the GDDR5 cards and stay away from the DDR3 versions.

are there any gddr5 cards that are passive?

Thanks

Looks like all of the 6450 and 6570 cards have degraded to DDR3
You'd have to bump up to the 6670 for GDDR5 and then I don't see any passive cards listed at Newegg. However, Sapphire has the Ultimate edition that is passive. Here's a review at Hardware Heaven. A little overkill for your needs..maybe. Don't know if it's available in the US, yet. A whole slew of passive cards were shown at Computex last month...again, need to check availability.

Maybe soon this card will be available, Sapphire Ultimate Radeon HD 6670 Review

Sapphire 5670 seems to be one of the most quiet active-cooled cards, and has plenty of power:
http://ht4u.net/reviews/2010/sapphire_r ... index9.php