It's looking like time to upgrade my Ti4400 vidcard to something a bit faster, but mostly because it's not capable of playing movies via tv-out with current drivers (I apparently got one of the nVidia ones that're affected).

Anyway, my bad luck aside, does anybody have any recommendations for a Radeon 9500/9600 or Geforce FX 5600-class card that's quiet without mods? Failing that, I might pop for a Zalman heatpipe arrangement, but I'd prefer something stock and reasonably-priced (no Sapphire 9700 Pros with preinstalled Zalman coolers).

My rig currently has a Visiontek Ti4400 in it and it's the loudest component in it, so any gains in quieting my video would go a long way.

Just get another set drivers to test first. If the card has a TV-out it should work just fine. Or are You having a problem with DVD playback?

Jan

Sapphire has a passively cooled 9600pro card that should be out any day now. It's listed at Newegg and some other stores for under $200.

The performance of the card is about the same as your Ti4400, except that it's a DX9 card.
You can see a photo of the card here: http://www.digit-life.com/archive.shtml?dl20030702

My new XPS came with Radeon 9800 and it is very quite only my PSU is noisy

Jan Kivar: certain nVidia videocards have Macrovision support that, when coupled with driver support, disables tv-out when playing movies. I found this out _after_ buying my card because it only became an issue after roughly Detonator 41 or 42ish (I think- I read it a month or so ago and have been too busy to do much follow-up). Anyway, when I have a newer Det installed Windows Media Player crashes when I have my desktop cloned to the TV, and PowerDVD tells me politely that tv-out has been disabled. Old drivers=no problems for TV-out.

Fabool: thx for the heads up- I'll have to keep my eyes peeled. Bloody shame that Newegg doesn't think that money from Canadians spends as well as southern greenbacks. I even tried ordering a stereo from www.crutchfield.com the other day and they won't ship to Canada any more.


lunar: if you find your 9800 quiet, what's in the rest of your system? I don't know what an XPS is for comparison. What brand of fans are in your system? What have you done to slow them down from 12v? What brand/model of PSU is in your rig?

I'm not sure its from Dell and I believe they just use generic parts when you pick items they dont say most brands but I will try and find out.

On my last 2 vid cards, I just ripped the fan off the card and replaced it with a heatsink. Considering that I replace my cards every 18 months, what do I have to lose..

I haven't had a problem yet. One thing that I've noticed is that some oem manufacturers put fans on their vid cards, while others don't. This always puzzled me as the cards use the exact same gpu. Shop around for a version of your card that comes with a nice big heatsink, not a fan.

I believe that the 9800 in the dell xps is passive, and cooled by the case itself.

Chunker: what vidcards did you try that with? I was going to fiddle with mine to make it quieter until I found out that mine was one of the ones with the Macrovision problem. Major lousy feature in a HTPC, eh? If we didn't play a lot of games here then running older drivers wouldn't be a problem, but...

Radeonman: Hehehe, budget my @@s! But I can get it at $10 off if I get a Zodiac paperweight with it! Maybe I'll take two. It'd probably be the card I'd buy if I wanted to spend $579 US on a videocard, but I don't. $200 US is more like my max budget. Wife, mortgage, cars, monkeys, etc etc etc...

Lunar: I was just wondering if the card and the rest of the 'puter was quiet by SPCR standards. I've seen lots of things like case fans, PSUs, vidcards, etc being described as quiet by people with big honking CPU HSFs that would drown out a passing transit bus. The rest of my system is pretty quiet, so my vidcard has to be _very_ quiet. No FX 5800 Ultras allowed!

From what I have seen in other threads the Dell XPS is NOT quiet by SPCR standards, even if it is better than much of what is out there

The XPS is not that quiet only my vid card seems quiet as I said the PSU fans are very noisey but only during game play it is actually nice and quiet during normal use. But the Rad 9800 is good

I'm looking fairly seriously at a Sapphire 9600 Pro at the moment and hoping it's not too noisy by SPCR standards. I was in looking at a local shop and the price he quoted me seemed pretty good for a retail card.

If it's pretty good I won't bother with a Zalman heatpipe rig for it, but if worse comes to worse, after a few more months and winter starts to loom, silence will be more important when I get more free time in the house.

Anybody here have one of the 9600 Pro Sapphires? How about the 9500 Pros? I've been reading a few reviews on them but nothing I've seen yet mentions noise at all.