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Unless you're willing to buy and mount a huge aftermarket heatsink, a fanless video card that's worth a damn just doesn't exist.

 

What are your system's other specs, Hockey?

 

CPU?

Amount of RAM?

Your monitor's resolution?

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What is your brand and model CPU (Intel and AMD are very different), model because some have more cores, larger L caches ext...

 

Nearly every graphics card has a fan, unless you want a heat sink larger then your computer, have a $500+ and want to liquid cool, its a price you will have to pay.

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Rpublic commando,Unreal Editor

 

screen res: 1536x960

 

and I really would perfer a fanless because of the noise

 

The 9800GT I linkied you to is still an option. If you dont mind paying a bit more, powercolor have a fanless 5750 1GB $149USD

 

powercolor_hd5750_passiv.jpg

 

http://www.powercolor.com/Global/News.asp?id=834

 

Personal 2c: coupling passive cooling and GDDR5 is a recipe for increased power bills and a hot hot hot case! You must be a stickler for the noise. Even my GTX 295 is only is loud-ish when at full load running a high end hame or folding. When youre gaming the volume is usually up so it isnt really that bothersome if you have some decent fans for starters

 

Good luck with your choice :)

 

mtfbwya

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I know that it's confusing.

 

You're comparing cards from the two major GPU manufacturers, so, no, comparing model #s won't work. The cards that you're going to want to get familiar with are ATI's HD 4xxx and HD 5xxx series and Nvidia's GeForce 9, 2xx and 4xx series. To simplify things a bit, look in the "Config core" category to compare the different models. Higher #s there denote a more powerful GPU. Keep in mind that, due to architectural differences, 1 Nvidia unified shader is equal to roughly 3.5 ATI unified shaders, which is why ATI GPUs have such a high number of them.

 

Oh, and you definitely have adequate CPU power and RAM. You would benefit from a much better video card.

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1 Nvidia unified shader is equal to roughly 3.5 ATI unified shaders

 

Q! I barely know what that means :p

 

@HockeyGoalie: The best way to shop for a card is to choose what games you like and then find benchmarks done on these games by cards you are interested in. Then you simply compare..looking at performance, price (and whatever other factors are important to you like heat/power consumption etc)

 

eg. Republic commando uses the unreal v2, engine. Benchies for Unreal2 games arent easy to come by for modern cards, but games using the Unreal3 engine will give you a decent idea of how an Unreal2 based game would run.

 

I quickly sourced some benchies for the 5750 and 9800GT and a couple of Unreal3 games >> COD4 and CODWorld At War.

 

I also isolated the resolutions relevant to you. Its important to remember that the average frames per second for both cards across both games always is over 60fps. 60fps looks nice and smooth. In fact, most people wont notice 82 vs 75 fps, thats something just the benchmarking app can discern.

 

The reason for this is becuase of the speed at which the human eye works, but rather than go into that, just remember ; average 60fps or more = good/playable/fun to look at

 

Unreal3benchies.jpg

 

To read more see of the reviews I used, see some benchies for different types of games >> see here

 

ATI Radeon 57xx series review at Xbit labs

 

Gigabyte 9800GT review at Bjorn3D

 

*nb, They reviewed a card with 512Mb video memory. There *usually* are improvements when the card is 1GB, but it is not double performance ...usually something like 5% (or not at all!) It varies according to title/program of course ;)

 

hope that is useful info

 

mtfbwya

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Are you in the US? Do you have a Windows Live account? If so, sign up for Bing cashback, go to Bing.com and search for "video card". Look for Tiger Direct's sponsored link at the top of the page (should read 13.2% Bing cash back) and use that link to take you to Tiger Direct and look for this card. After rebate and Bing cash back, it should come to about $53 and change, including shipping. Just make sure that you jump through all of the hoops correctly.

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Bing Cashback is over...

 

Bing cashback

 

Dear valued cashback customer:

We are writing to notify you that the Bing cashback program will be discontinued, and the last day to earn cash back on your Bing Shopping purchases will be July 30, 2010.

 

Until July 30, 2010 9:00 pm PST, it’s business as usual so continue to take advantage of great offers from your favorite merchants. You can redeem all of your earned cashback savings consistent with the cashback terms and conditions and access the Bing cashback customer support system through July 30, 2011. We encourage you to redeem your cashback savings and to further support redemption, we are waiving the $5 minimum payout effective July 31, 2010. To assist with prompt delivery of your cashback earnings, please visit http://cashbackaccount.bing.com to ensure your account information is current. For more details and answers to your questions, please visit our frequently asked questions page.

 

Thank you very much for being a loyal cashback user. We remain committed to delivering great value to our customers, and we are currently working on an exciting new program which you will hear more about from us later this summer.

 

Sincerely,

 

Bing cashback Team

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In this case $11.88.

 

Hockey, do you live near a Fry's Electronics? There's an even better deal going on there, but it's in-store only.

 

By the way, whichever card you get, you're going to have to check and see if your power supply is up to the task of powering it. Graphics cards are power-hungry. What kind of PSU do you have?

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Hmm. ok Thanks for the info! I will Most Likly go with the Gigabyte 9800!

Thanks again for all you help!

 

As Q mentions, make sure your Power Supply Unit(PSU) is up the task. If you dont know what you have, best visually inspect it :)

 

mtfbwya

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