9700GT and fan speed

[Doom9]

The nVidia 7800GT fans know two speeds: full blast and low noise. The 7800GTX adjusts fan speed in function of GPU temperature, just like it has been done for CPUs in some time now.

I'm wondering, is the 7900GT improved in that way and also has a fan whose speeds varies with temperature? I can't find this tiny but rather important detail in card reviews.

[Blue_MiSfit]

doom9,

title of thread is 9700gt :)

IMHO, the stock coolers have an unacceptable performance/noise ratio.

I always install a Zalman CNPS series cooler. They're nice and quiet, and even at 5v speeds temps are better than the stock cooler in all instances. They're cheap too - under $40. Plus, they come with RAM sinks...

my 7800gt overclocks nicely and stays silent.

An added bonus, it's really fun and easy to install :D

[Doom9]

well.. I'm kinda scared of freezing my card to get the glue off.. it would only sting of the card broke since I longer have to live on a student's budget, but I also don't have time for experiments anymore. Basically, I'll either get a new AMD or Intel shuttle when the next gen of CPUs comes out and I'm planning on the 7900 series of GFX card.. the GTX is problematic because it takes two slots which will rule out any possibility of adding a PCIe DVB-S2 card (if they finally release one) so I'd rather stay with a 1 slot solution, plus performance wise, the small difference doesn't really matter.. with the 3007FPW you need a quad card rig to play at the full resolution anyway and games don't really support that so I'll live with 1650x until then.. the loss in focus is a lot less noticeable in games than in office apps.

What bugs me about all the reviews is that they never mention fan noise even though it's a big thing.. they do mention fan noise for MBs and especially barebones.. why not for GFX cards as well? After all, these days GFX cards are often the noisiest part of a computer.

[CWR03]

You may consider the ATI X1900 XTX if it will suit your purposes - in benchmarking tests I've read it performs almost as well as two 7900 GTX cards SLI'd together. Whether or not it's quiet by itself is another matter, but I'd bet it's quieter than two 7900's.

[Ridderen]

when changing the cooler the warrenty (i think it's called in english*) is lost

* if the graphic card crash you can't get it repaired for free

[foxyshadis]

x1900 XTX is the hottest and loudest video card available, according to the register, and quips that you need industrial earmuffs to use them with Crossfire. (The exception being Sapphire's 3-slot water-cooled card.) 7900 GTX on the other hand is cooler and less power-consuming than 7800.

Of course, both of them are only marginally better than their lower-priced cousins anyway. Are you sure that benchmark was one XTX and not a crossfire configuration?

[Blue_MiSfit]

Doom9,

You don't have to freeze your graphics card anymore to remove the cooler :D

It's held on with several screws, there is thermal paste on the GPU. I was worried too, but really.. It's so freaking easy. Like I said, it's actually really fun to perform surgery on a graphics card :D

You're right though that installing a 3rd party cooler (like the zalmans) generally means 2 slots total. I'm out of space already on my Antec p180 full tower with my Zalman'd 7800gt, an audigy2zs, its midi header, and a usb/firewire header..

Now all I need is the digital audio i/o header for the audigy2zs (or the 5 1/4" bay panel, but those are impossible to find!). No extra room, save that free PCIe x16 slot that I've got saved for my next 7800gt :D

~MiSfit

[nFury8]

A snippet from this review (http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/geforce7900gtx_7.html) on Xbitlabs:

It’s worse with the noise characteristics of the GeForce 7900 GT. The small blower this graphics card’s cooler is equipped with is always working at a high speed and is always audible against the noise from other computer components (CPU, power supply, hard disk drives). We didn’t find any traces of a speed management system on our sample of the card, but we think off-the-shelf samples of the GeForce 7900 GT will have it. The fan speed can be controlled with the latest version of RivaTuner, but we wouldn’t recommend you to do so since the GeForce 7900 GT cooler is small and may not cope with its job if the fan speed is set too low.

Franking speaking, we don’t think the GeForce 7900 GT cooler is half as good as the GeForce 7900 GTX one. It is small and has a tiny fan, so it is rather noisy, yet not very efficient. If you are going to overclock your GeForce 7900 GT or if you just want to have a silent computer, you may want to think about a more efficient cooling solution. It’s possible some manufacturers will equip their GeForce 7900 GT with such coolers right away.

[Mk4ever]

You may consider the ATI X1900 XTX if it will suit your purposes - in benchmarking tests I've read it performs almost as well as two 7900 GTX cards SLI'd together. Whether or not it's quiet by itself is another matter, but I'd bet it's quieter than two 7900's.

Although I don't know if that is true or not, I'll back that from my experience:

My ATI 7500 AIW 64MB (not the regular, faster version) that is supposed to compare to GeForce 2-3, can beat 5200 128 MB without tweaking.

My friend works as a technician and PC repairing, and noticed, unfortunately, that ALL the numbers we see on sites comparing cards are NOT TRUE. ATI crads always perform better than reviews and always have the better picture and colors.

I saw this with my own eyes: the x1300 pro that is supposed to be worse than the 6600 actually performs quite like the 6600GT.

I say if u didn't get a card yet, consider the ATI alternative.