What do people here use for video cards

[MiniKnight]

My old ATI (3 yrs old now) is getting long in the tooth and is too loud. I am going crazy and it is time for an upgrade. I've been considering and ASUS STRIX GTX 970

The key feature for me is silent cooling. I play about 1 hour of games with an old college buddy a week but never anything new and demanding so this should last a long time.

I'm thinking people on here are using similar setups so I wanted to see if anyone has made the move yet.

I know about the 4GB memory thing but I'm not too worried about it.

 

[T_Minus]

I have a 270x that I use to play BF4 and TitanFall and maintain 50fps+ avg on 2560x1600 with HIGH settings on most, and NO AA, not needed at this resolution IMHO.

I see 0 need to spend more than $100 new for something that can play the latest games at 50+fps AVG.

I had a 290x and downgraded to give you an idea of how pretty it still looks, and how performance is REALLY.

Anyone playing on less resolution I see 0 reason to spend more than $100 on a 270x used of course. I even had a 2nd 270x in my other system that I was going to run dual then figured WHY? It plays what I want, and is cheap.

The 970 seems nice but not for the $, sure it's much higher performing but do YOU need that?

 

[MiniKnight]

I'm trying to drive large multi-monitor displays so I want the vram to do it.

 

[T_Minus]

Be more specific.

Large physically or resolution?

Are you talking about for games OR business stuff like cad and photoshop stuff?

The 270x can run multiple monitors, I think I ran 2x30" and 1x20.1" before off one.

When I need more I just add the 1GB fanless cards that go on sale for $29 for XFX or some other brand. Then I can add 2 more monitors or 3 of lower resolutions.

 

[MiniKnight]

All of the above. The DVI-I is useless to me. Not CAD but AE/ PS. TBH if games work OK, then I'm fine with $200 more.

 

[T_Minus]

Maybe it was my 290x that had a bunch of mini-DP that i used for the tripple 30"s ?

 

[OBasel]

I get heat at home for loud PC's in the house so I get it @MiniKnight.

What about changing to that m-ITX ( Amazon.com: ASUS Graphics Cards GTX970-DCMOC-4GD5: Computers & Accessories one) and a Xeon D? You could have 8 cores 128GB RAM and plenty of GPU and shove it in a small cube. If you had a 5.25" bay you could even get a 6-in-1 SATA for SSDs and a PCIe x4 drive to show off.

 

[nickscott18]

Myself, a Saphire 270 Dual x in my desktop, running a pair of 24" monitors - have found it to be quiet (not silent, but can't hear it over the 120mm psu fan, or corsair all in one water cooler, but I'm also not too demanding of it either). Also have another one of these that will be going in my server at some point, passed through to a Media Center - thats more of a matter of getting the time to do it.
Nick

 

[T_Minus]

Like Nick I can't really hear mine either. I believe I have a Saphire and a MSI 270x and both were nearly dead silent except when it was hot in the office and gaming.

 

[capn_pineapple]

I'm running a GTX780 on water cooling, If I were to buy another card tomorrow I would get the 970 or the 750ti for a small low power machine.

 

[JSchuricht]

I have a pair of 290x in my main rig but that's only because they paid for themselves last year.

Currently they drive 6x 1080p screens.

 

[T_Minus]

FWIW 2x270x can be had for $200 which in games iirc was very very close to a 290x, and if you're in windows wanting multi-monitor support 2x270x can drive a lot.

If I was spending $300+ I'd go NVIDIA now to save on electricity, but since I only spent $100 I could careless about idle/desktop power

 

[chinesestunna]

IMO, 7970 or 280X is best bang for buck, runs a bit hotter but around $120 used for 7970 and $160 for 280x I think they're hard to beat

 

[T_Minus]

Best buck for gaming that is.

 

[chinesestunna]

Just saw the "silent" requirement, 7970s are definitely hard to cool, even fans on my tri fan gigabyte ramps up more than I'd like. If $300 then yea 970 would be way to go, even if .5gb of that ram is partitioned in a weird way so that in corner cases you see performance drop

 

[TechIsCool]

Just saw the "silent" requirement, 7970s are definitely hard to cool, even fans on my tri fan gigabyte ramps up more than I'd like. If $300 then yea 970 would be way to go, even if .5gb of that ram is partitioned in a weird way so that in corner cases you see performance drop

They run cool and quite under water but its amazing to see how cheap a 7970 is now I remember paying at least 300 for my card used.

 

[chinesestunna]

They run cool and quite under water but its amazing to see how cheap a 7970 is now I remember paying at least 300 for my card used.

But that would change the budget quite a bit . Agreed about pricing, thank god miners moved on to other models

 

[Deci]

6950, drives 3 screens and I rarely ever play games so the fact it's who knows how old doesn't bother me.

 

[NeverDie]

One possible idea on an altogether different solution to the problem: if you're gaming with closed headphones you likely won't hear fan noise, so then the concern is limited to fan noise when not gaming. To workaround that, on some systems, such as my laptop, you can toggle between the video card (for when gaming) and the built-in CPU graphics when not gaming.

 

[andrewbedia]

My old ATI (3 yrs old now) is getting long in the tooth and is too loud. I am going crazy and it is time for an upgrade. I've been considering and ASUS STRIX GTX 970

The key feature for me is silent cooling. I play about 1 hour of games with an old college buddy a week but never anything new and demanding so this should last a long time.

I'm thinking people on here are using similar setups so I wanted to see if anyone has made the move yet.

I know about the 4GB memory thing but I'm not too worried about it.

I bought a R9 290 (not X) reference card on ebay a couple months ago for $175. Couldn't complain for the price. About two weeks after I got it, stripped the cooler off of it and put an EK Acetal/Copper full cover block on it. Can't get more quiet than that.

If you don't mind used and have some patience, ebay can be a gold mine for this.