For my new build I want a video card with performance roughly equivalent to a GTX 570 but as quiet as possible without any modding. I was leaning towards the MSI N570GTX Twin Frozr III OC GeForce GTX 570 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814127582). But after looking at the charts on Tom's hardward comparing performance in various situations it looks like the Radeon 6970 cards have similar performance. Looking at the noise charts (Idle: http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2011 ... ,2679.html Load: http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2011 ... ,2680.html ) it looks like the some of the Radeon 6970 cards are quieter at load than the MSI GTX 570 and about the same when idle. Especially the Asus HD 6970 Direct CUII (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814121430), though I am wondering if it is a mistake in the load noise chart as it is considerably quieter than the others.

Has anyone done compared these two cards or chipsets, have experience with them or seen a good article comparing them in both performance and noise?

Here is the comparison of the two on Tom's Hardware
and a handy chart from AnandTech comparing the two across various benchmarks: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/292?vs=306

Noise charts are useless, they are probably stock vs stock and they give no info about the fan profile.

For mid end you cant go wrong with AMD's 6850/6870. But personally I prefer nvidia's 570/580 GTX for quiet high end gaming. For the sole reason nvidia is a better GPU (sorry, I used yo be an AMD fan) and they have more custom cards out. BUT AMD seems to be catching up with things and more customes are being launched lately (HIS IceQ etc.

You can't go wrong with this 580, see my review here:
viewtopic.php?f=19&t=62679

Remember that high end quiet gaming is as much about your GPU cooling as it is about your casefans and airflow!

Also you can get a 6970/580 quiet at idle, but not at full load. Therefore not just go for dba but for the gentleness(?) of the fans. That never shows in noisecharts.