Graphic card advice appreciated

[mr soft]

I was looking at graphic cards as mine is on the limit , eah 2400..

I saw this in the local shop.

http://www.appinformatica.com/tarjetas-graficas-powercolor-hd4670-512m-gddr3-128bits-pcie-2.0.php

Can anyone recomend this card , only i´ve never heard of powercolor , also are the turbine style fans quieter ?

[moviefan]

I have bought the Club 3D ATI Radeon 4670 (http://www.alternate.de/html/product/Grafikkarten_ATI_PCIe/Club_3D/CGAX-4672DDM/300680/?) recently for my new HTPC and I am very content with it so far. The only negative aspect is the slightly noisy fan when playing 3D games, but that's not too bad. Generally, for a HTPC with the option to play some games, it is a great graphics card. I can play Call of Duty 4, Racedriver Grid and UT3 at 1920x1080 and max details completely smoothly.

[Blue_MiSfit]

The 4670 is a stupidly good value :)

You will love it. Get it now!

Powercolor is a good manufacturer, they all follow the ATi reference design anyway (save the cooler).

Typically larger coolers are quieter, but you can find a passively cooled version I think, if you're willing to spend a bit more dough. Also, do make sure you have decent case cooling if you're going passive.

One other bonus from the 4670 is it doesn't need much power, and therefore has no PCIe power connection requirement. Any "mainstream / gamer" cards need at least one, which rules them out of most basic OEM computers.

~MiSfit

[Sharktooth]

that card is good. it's not too expensive (at all) and it is reasonably FAST for gaming. it also supports DXVA 2.0 acceleration (that means blu-ray playback too) and the cooler used by powercolor for that card is more efficient (and quieter) that the one used by ATi in the reference design.
i'd say it's a very good choice for a videocard, unless you need the ultimate gaming performance.

P.S.: i forgot to say it supports CrossFire X too... so in case you need more power...

[mr soft]

You will love it. Get it now

it's not too expensive (at all) and it is reasonably FAST for gaming

That´s sorted then . :)

I`ve been doing more gaming on it lately and that's where the graphics issue surfaced. I push the cpu to 3gig and use the card with River tuner, but you can tell its struggling

I´ll also be looking to update the MB.

Current setup is

am2 5000 black ed.
2g DDR 2 hyper x 800
NVIDIA nForce 560 .
eah 2400

Ive been looking at AM2+ with 790 FX Chipsets or should I go SLI ?

I have to decide which one first , MB or graphics card .
Cash wise at festive season.

[Blue_MiSfit]

I'd go for the AMD chipset. nVidia's been having lots of problems with their chipsets recently.

Why a new MB, though?

~MiSfit

[Sharktooth]

well, if you're going to get the 4670 then the choice would be 790 FX.
keep also in mind Phenom II CPUs are coming on january and when talking about phenom II there could be nice surprises (hint hint (http://www.physorg.com/news146511302.html)...)

[mr soft]

Why a new MB, though?

I was reading up on MB chipsets and thinking mine was a bit of a bottleneck. Also it´s an am2 so I´m limited
A nice am2+ with 790 FX would compliment that card and let me get a bit more out of my CPU and yeah next year CPU, PSU. :)

[Sharktooth]

personally i always bought asus motherboards. even this time it's a matter of "taste"... and budget.

[Caroliano]

I read that AMD has removed the "native hardware support for double-precision floating-point math" from HD4670 (Source (http://techreport.com/articles.x/15559)). Is this important for video filtering and other tasks that use GPU power now or in the future?

Would an 1GB HD4670 be an good choice, if I plan to use ff3dgpu() on HD content? And for future-proofing against future GPGPU apps that hopefully will apear in future? I plan to keep this graphic card for at least 3~4 years. Currently I have an onboard Geforce 6100 that is already pretty slow for most games, and I don't even tried ff3dgpu() in it.

[Sharktooth]

not really. FP is hardly used in video encoding process and video processing.

[Blue_MiSfit]

A 1gb card for fft3dgpu is a good idea if you plan to use more than one instance on 1080p video while using the computer for other tasks - especially under Vista and its improved GPU memory management (from what I understand).

If you don't do multiple encode jobs / batches, you're probably fine with a 512MB version. But in all honesty, the 1GB version should be very close in price, so I'd get it just to be safe.

~MiSfit

[mr soft]

I checked out the powercolor 1 gig ddr3 , it comes in at 15 euros more . I could´nt find any 4670 passive.
I´m also interested in this 9600 gt with 512 ddr3 but silent.
I was reading that they are as good, if not better than the 4670.

http://www.appinformatica.com/tarjetas-graficas-gigabyte-gf9600gt-512m-gddr3-pcx.php

I have a couple weeks before the sales start here so I´ll keep looking.

[Sharktooth]

yep. but 9600GT costs a few bucks more, runs hotter and draws more power.
it definatly depends on what you want.

[mr soft]

I´m sure like most I´m looking for,low power consumption, low heat, low price,no noise or max 14 /16 db. and half descent fps.
I know, world on a stick. :D

I found this a couple of days ago on a french site. It´s the first silent 4670 I´ve seen. The small heatpipe setup looks beautiful.

http://www.presence-pc.com/actualite/HIS-Radeon-4670-iSilent-32892/

I also found this site for The Truth About Graphics Power Requirements on all of the modern graphics cards. Hopefuly it´ll help someone looking for a new card.

http://archive.atomicmpc.com.au/forums.asp?s=2&c=7&t=9354