StarDestroyer.Net BBS

What currently would you say is the best 209.99 or below card for the value with some important caveats

1. I will never SLI this card
2. It must work well in a tropical enviorment, IE it can take a room already at 82*F-88*F. CPU heat is being neutered by a full blown water cooling setup. But it needs to be a card that can take running hot.

I intend to purchase this card by the end of this month, so bonus points if the new Nvida Geforce GTX 280/260s and ATI 4870's cut the price of the card in question.

I'm not sure how well most cards will take running that hot unless you put an enormous heatsink or add the GPU to your watercooling setup. If you can do that, the 8800GT is pretty much your best bet.

Gotta agree with phongn.

The 8800GT is hard to beat at that price. Another good option is the 9600GT; it isn't quite as good as the 8800GT but is still a nice card and it'll free up some cash for an aftermarket heatsink or expanding your watercooling if you decide to go that route. It is possible the new cards will push down the price of the 8800GTS to that range, or slightly higher -- the new 4850s are supposed to be in the $250 range. The (G92) cards are the best in that series. Avoid the factory overclocked ones under the circumstances, the last thing you need is the card to produce more heat!

In terms of manufacturers, look for XFX if you intend to add a bigger heatsink or watercool the card -- my understanding is that XFX will honor its warranty even after the card has been modified in that fashion.

EVGA also has an excellent warranty and a step-up program but I have no idea if they will cover a card that has had the heatsink replaced.

XFX 9600GT, with Call of Duty 4:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814150306

XFX 8800GT, with Company of Heroes:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814150254

I've heard several places the 8800GTs are a little noisy, and one of the newegg reviews (take with a grain of salt!) suggest they also tend to run a bit hot unless you adjust the fan speed up.

EVGA also has an excellent warranty and a step-up program but I have no idea if they will cover a card that has had the heatsink replaced.

You have to put the old one back, but they'll honor it. On Newegg, ECS has an 8800GT with a big heatsink on it as well.

I can't recommend the HD3870 from ATI enough. The thing is a cheap/affordable mid ranged card with enough kick to get most jobs done. As for heat, balls-to-the-wall screaming edge, make the card sputter graphics barely makes it get past 40c, and I've got stock Dell cooling in the rest of the machine. My card manufacturer is Sapphire, bought it off of Newegg

3870 is nice, but I don't think it competes with the 9600 GT on a price / performance standpoint, and I think the thermal and power needs are about the same for both cards.

Not a lot of experience with the 9600, admittedly. Will it run on a 375 watt power supply? the 3870 does it with no problem.

Joviwan wrote:Not a lot of experience with the 9600, admittedly. Will it run on a 375 watt power supply? the 3870 does it with no problem.

I have a 500 Watt supply, power is no issue.

HEAT is the issue.

Well, again, I've got no experience with the 9600. I mentioned power because that was one of my worried when buying a card.

At any rate,I can testify anecdotally that it is very hard to get my 3870 to higher temperatures, and it seems to 'cap out' at around 40c no matter what I torture it with, even in weird weather/heat in the house.

From living in the desert with ambient tempature sometimes reaching 40C....

I'm currently on a Gigabyte 8800GT with a Zalman heatsink that came with the GPU(not modded). It seems to work well enough, with 36C ambient having the GPU at 50C.

phongn wrote:I'm not sure how well most cards will take running that hot unless you put an enormous heatsink or add the GPU to your watercooling setup. If you can do that, the 8800GT is pretty much your best bet.

I run an 8800GT in Australia, where it's quite hot (especially inside, since I don't run the A/C all day). It doesn't have a problem at all.

Well thanks for the advice, I went ahead and ordered This

It's a EVGA GeForce 9600 GT 512MB card, it's a dual slot(Bigger cooler) so it should be good to go for my current temp issues, I'll be getting it on the 10th and we will see how it handles.