Hello All,

I need to buy a card for a Asus P67-M Pro/i5-2500K build in a Define Mini and am looking at either a 5670 or 5770, both seem good value for price. I have come up with some of the following cards on newegg.ca.

5670
$60 XFX HD-567X-YNF3 5607 - 512MB

$70 Sapphire 100287L HD 5670 - 512MB

5770
$94 PowerColor AX5770 1GBD5-H - 1GB

$100 HIS H577FK1GD - 5770 - 1GB

$110 Sapphire Vapor-X 100283VX-2L - 5770 - 1GB

Max price I am willing to spend is $110 so these are the cards I found within this range. I was just wondering if people had any experience with these cards in terms of how quiet and reliable they are. I have read through all of the comments on newegg but there have been some differences in peoples perception of silence and I only trust the SPCR community for that. I think I am leaning towards a 5670 for power consumption but I wanted to keep the 5770 on the table, I very causally game.

Any recommendations would be much appreciated, this is my first build and I am going for a PC that is quiet and will last a while.

Also found an ASUS 5670 for $55 at a local store, this is my first pick right now.

Well, you should easily be able to find a passively cooled 5670. That card can be cooled rather easily, unlike the 5770 which requires at least some airflow.

What games do you intend to play, and what are your minimum requirements in terms of graphical details?

regards..

A mindless response: Sapphire 5670 passive or Powercolor 5750 passive

A less mindless response: We can steer you toward the ideal card if we know your apps and screen resolution.

Pretty much just SC2 as of right now, maybe D3 in the future. Would be nice to play at decently high settings at the get go. The more I think about it the more I just want a half decent, QUIET graphics card. Performance can be within the range of a 5670 but I was just wondering if the fanned ones are reasonable since they are usually substantially cheaper (like I said I can get the asus for $55 and it looks like fan speeds can be controlled on that one).

Currently using this monitor and I do not see myself switching it any time soon, native resolution is 1280 x 1024 pixels.

Sorry again if my questions are vague still very new to this.

Ok, some stuff you may or may not know...

Here's a Starcraft 2 benchmark at Techspot vs a bunch of video cards. The 1680x1050 charts will give an idea of what you will see. Just add ~25-30% to the frame rates (for your monitor that has that many fewer pixels to push). So, at medium quality, you might see a min of 50 fps with the 5670. Kick that up to high quality, and the min drops to ~44fps and ave 53fps.

So, the 5670 might be on the lower end of what you might want in a gaming card.

Oh yes, one super big caveat: Starcraft 2 (like most Blizzard games) is more dependant on the CPU than the GPU. The CPU in Techspot's setup is an i7 920 (Overclocked @ 3.70GHz). They also tend to favor really fast dual cores with decent amount of cache over slower quad cores. So, these frame rates *might* be a tad slower than shown if you run the i5-2500K at stock.

That said, stay away from the closed shroud reference coolers. They tend to be noisy. If you don't want to go passive, the Sapphire Vapor-X has gotten good reviews as well as MSI Cyclone. You can use MSI's Afterburner utility to adjust fan speed profile.

If you actually game, a 5770. if you light game and not that into it, 5670 is great.

doesnt make a crap of difference if its 9000 watts or 3 watts. you have to have 5770 to use 2010+ games. I have one, its a great card. so smooth and great performance per watt. any aftermarket cooler on it plus slow moving fan makes it inaudible and cool running.

burp

I am somewhat in the same boat (looking for a 5670): I may decide to go passive, but if not, which of these do you think would be quieter:

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.as ... 6814150504

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.as ... 6814161334

Or would the Vapor X be quieter?

Id say just buy the cheapest and if it ends up being loud replace it with a AC accelero. From what I gathered the card is so low heat that the fan does not have to spin very fast anyways if you control it in afterburner/asus software.

So the ASUS 5670 being quiet was a bust (figured the computer store guy didn't know what he was talking about). Even when I reduce the fan speed down to 0%(not sure how that could be possible since it is still spinning) in MSI afterburner it is still very audible.

When it goes on sale I plan on mounting an Accelero S1 Rev.2 on it. Anyone have any experience with this cooler(/card) and any advice for me in the mounting? Any other options people would suggest over this?

5670 just doesn't use that much power. You could go for the L2 Pro, instead.

Is the L2 silent though? I should be able to get the S1 at near the same price so what would the advantages of the L2 be over it?

<shrugs> There are a couple of SPCR members with the L2 Pro (heck I've got one sitting on my desk that I still need to install on my 5770). Maybe they'll speak up and provide 1st hand info. I seem to recall happy reports.

I based the L2 Pro on it being ~22 vs ~$30 for the S1 CDN at Newegg. YMMV.

I tested L2 with my HD 4850. Now if your card has working fan control L2 will be nice choice. At full speed it was more pleasurable to hear than Asus HD 4670 or Sapphire HD 4850 coolers. Loud but better sound quality. With fan control L2 proved quieter and better cooler than stock coolers. Installation was easy. Now if you don't have working fan controller matter might be different and if my memory serves correctly AC supplies adapter to make fan run @ 7v if you don't have working fan controller in vga card or other problems controlling the fan. I hope this helps.

- Jani

While I can't vouch for many of the other cards presented here, but when I was looking for a quiet card to replace a glitching ASUS 4850, I specifically looked for a quiet 5770 for my pseudo-HTPC... I call it that because I do also game on it from time to time. I don't play anything super GPU intensive on that system, but still desired a card with enough power to play certain games at moderate settings. I took a chance on the Sapphire Vapor-X 5770 and it is exactly what I was looking for. VERY quiet... not 100% silent, but still very quiet.... much quieter than the 4850 it replaced. I did roll back the factory overclock and set the fan speed to around 50% and that is just quiet enough to blend with the sound of my case fans (which are very low speed, quiet, fluid bearing fans) while keeping the card moderately cool as well (40 to 45 degrees C, if I remember correctly).

The fan control works fine on the asus but it is not PWM, which the accelero fan is, leading me to believe that I would not be able to hit the low speeds and noise which it advertises. I am thinking S1 rev2 may still be best option since it is for sure going to be able to cool silently the 5670 and that I can probably switch it over to an upgrade in the future. Unless people have experience with the L2 being silent when not attached to a pwm header. This really is the only source of noise in my build so I would love to get rid of it, I got the silence bug bad .