KVR Audio

tehlord · Post by **tehlord** » Tue Jun 18, 2013 10:47 am

Dudes

My current GPU (an ancient ATI x1550 something) is screeching and moaning like a mutha. I suspect she's about to blow

I'd like to replace it with a new fanless model.

My motherboard has no onboard video before anybody suggests that!

I'm prone to bouts of Kerbal between music sessions, so a little 3D performance wouldn't go amiss, although it's not vital (actually, yes it is

)

Recommendations as cheap as possible please!

Ta

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Tue Jun 18, 2013 10:55 am

A passive NVidia GT210 would be under £30 off Amazon...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nvidia-GT210-32 ... B004LGIGR8

or have a dig thru scan's list:

http://www.scan.co.uk/search.aspx?q=nvidia+passive

DevonB · Post by **DevonB** » Tue Jun 18, 2013 12:11 pm

whyterabbyt wrote:A passive NVidia GT210 would be under £30 off Amazon...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nvidia-GT210-32 ... B004LGIGR8

or have a dig thru scan's list:

http://www.scan.co.uk/search.aspx?q=nvidia+passive

Great suggestion. I have an eVGA 210 fanless in my DAW machine. Cheap, works great. However, I did notice that installing one in a machine with onboard video (Intel G31 chipset if I recall) the 3D perf benchmark in Windows 7 scored LOWER with the 210 than with the on-board. That machine did only internet and office duties, so cannot comment on 3D performance (I leave the 3D lifting to my very noisy 560 Ti card) but it was replaced because even YouTube videos were choking under Win7 on that box with a Core2 E7500 with the onboard. Got the 210 in it, and problem went away. It worked just fine under WinXP though.

Devon

tehlord · Post by **tehlord** » Tue Jun 18, 2013 12:29 pm

Ok the 210 looks good.

i've just discovered there's a passive GT610 as well which seems to have great 3d performance for basically the same money (£30 or so).

Either of those will probably suffice.

jdnz · Post by **jdnz** » Tue Jun 18, 2013 3:59 pm

I've used these - good 3d perf (about the same as a gts460), very low power (about 55w max - so low it doesn't need a power connector). Only issue is the heatsink is quite chunky so will block adjacent slots on some boards

http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentatio ... 1471&lid=1

bk · Post by bk » Wed Jun 19, 2013 6:32 pm

tehlord wrote: I'm prone to bouts of Kerbal between music sessions, so a little 3D performance wouldn't go amiss, although it's not vital (actually, yes it is )

Had no idea what this was, so I went searching. What an incredibly deep piece of software! Thanks for mentioning it.

Compyfox · Post by **Compyfox** » Wed Jun 19, 2013 10:02 pm

tehlord wrote:Ok the 210 looks good.

i've just discovered there's a passive GT610 as well which seems to have great 3d performance for basically the same money (£30 or so).

Either of those will probably suffice.

HANDS OFF! Seriously, hands off!

Why? I just compared it with my old NVidia 9500GT, which I modded from active cooling to passive cooling. And this is the result after reading both out with GPU-Z:

Code: Select all

                   9500GT                   GT610
Released           Jul 2008                 May 2012
ROPs/TMUs          8/16                     4/8
Bus Interface      PCIe 2.0x16 @ x16 2.0    PCI-E 1.1 x16 @ x16 1.1
Shaders/Cores      32 Unified               48 Unified
Memory Type        DDR2                     DDR3
Memory Size        1GB                      1GB
Bus Width          128bit                   64bit
Bandwidth          12,8GB/s                 10,7GB/s
GPU Clock          550MHz                   810MHz
Memory             400MHz                   667MHz
Shader             1350MHz                  1620MHz

DirectX Support    10.0 / SM4.0             11.0 / SM5.0

I also ran some quick GPU benchmarks, and the GT610 pretty much offered slideshows only, while the 9500GT offered higher scores right from the start.

I am also looking for a silent/noiseless/fanless/passive solution. But the GPU needs to be at least twice as fast as my old 9500GT from 2008!

And it needs to be either dual HDMI or dual DVI-D.

So if there are our studio rig guru's around, please chime in and help us folks out.

jdnz · Post by **jdnz** » Thu Jun 20, 2013 2:43 am

Compyfox wrote: I am also looking for a silent/noiseless/fanless/passive solution. But the GPU needs to be at least twice as fast as my old 9500GT from 2008!

And it needs to be either dual HDMI or dual DVI-D.

go with the passive amd 7750 I linked to!

passmark ratings

9500gt : 290
gt230 : 478
gt610: 343
9800gt : 717
gts450 : 1533 (fast but hot/noisy)
7750: 1617

less power/heat than the gts450 and slightly faster - win-win!

it's got 1*DVI 1*HDMI and 1*DP, so covers all bases - works nicely dual-headed

Kaine · Post by **Kaine** » Thu Jun 20, 2013 8:41 am

Probably the 7750 mentioned above as the passive Nvidia 640 which is probably the highest Nvidia card I can think of is seriously underpowered at that price point.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/535?vs=612

Compyfox · Post by **Compyfox** » Thu Jun 20, 2013 11:10 am

jdnz wrote:go with the passive amd 7750 I linked to!

Thing is, the last time I've used ATI / AMD (doesn't matter which), was in the late 90ies. I was always an Intel and NVidia person. Especially due to the capabilities of CUDA, where tools like Reverberate or Nebula can massively benefit from.

And I'm used to the Dual Screen display settings of the NVidia (like: full screen on one display, full screen on another - but not fullscreen possible with that particular driver setting for both screens) - yadda yadda.

Then again, this is a passive card, it seems to smoke most similar powered NVidia cards. It's also not larger than the GT610 I tried last night (and I can still not recommend it!).

Else, modding. But 150quids for a GPU plus custom heatsink that is even larger than 2 slots? No way. Though the passive Sapphire is currently around 105EUR street, active around 95EUR.

I'll think about it. Currently the 9500GT with my passive heatsink mod is doing fine. Just minor graphic glitches in terms of vertical screen building (for example with a file explorer, it's taking a small tad to redraw, same with HD videos - but no major showstopper).

jdnz wrote: passmark ratings

9500gt : 290
gt610: 343

I can not confirm that. Granted, the card (GT610) has a higher clock and DDR3 instead of DDR2 (which adds a bit in terms of boost) - but else the 9500GT is ultimately superior.

jdnz wrote: it's got 1*DVI 1*HDMI and 1*DP, so covers all bases - works nicely dual-headed

I'm still a bit green in terms of new PC technology. but is the DisplayPort in any way similar to HDMI? I've seen adapters from DP->DVI-D, but they're like 30-50USD each. Same with HDMI adapters. Just in case I want to get a third display (which is highly unlikely currenlty).

Else, adapters from HDMI<->DVI-D is no problem - same stream, different cables.

DevonB · Post by **DevonB** » Thu Jun 20, 2013 12:09 pm

Compyfox wrote:I can not confirm that. Granted, the card (GT610) has a higher clock and DDR3 instead of DDR2 (which adds a bit in terms of boost) - but else the 9500GT is ultimately superior.

The 9500GT from what I can see was the upper end of the entry level cards. The 610 and 210 are second from the bottom of the lowest end entry level cards. The 210 card has pretty much always been a ~$35 card. The 9500GT was what? $60-$80 card? My point, is this really a fair comparison? It's not apple vs oranges, but at least granny smith vs red delicious.

Devon

Aiynzahev · Post by **Aiynzahev** » Thu Jun 20, 2013 2:06 pm

Have a quick look at this one Geoff:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814102950

Been looking for the same thing myself

tehlord · Post by **tehlord** » Thu Jun 20, 2013 5:29 pm

Thanks dudes.

I think I might still go for the GT610, based almost entirely on cost.

It seems to perform much better than I need it to based on all the Youtube videos of it running Skyrim and MW3 etc (none of which I'll be playing on my DAW!) for 2-3 times less cost than the ATI card.

This really is for the odd game of Kerbal (seriously, look it up

) rather than a 733t gaming rig!

Thanks for all the suggestions.

Compyfox · Post by **Compyfox** » Thu Jun 20, 2013 6:27 pm

I'd get a stronger GPU due to GPU DSP enabled rendering in certain tools, higher screen resolution (future proof) and overall being less of a strain for the OS. But then again, that's just me.

BTW:
The Sapphire 7750 passive is about 105EUR street, so it's "consumer" priced, and it might cover a lot of things for years to come.

Unless Adobe's rendering does not work with ATI (there seems to be a plugin called ATI Stream, which does the same as CUDA with Adobe programs) - and I can totally forget Audio DSP plugins that use CUDA.

EDIT:
Questions regarding ATI's dual screen handling.

I'm used to Matrox and NVidia.

With Matrox, I could hit on the "fullscreen" button of a tool, and it openend it on one screen of my desire. If I held down the CTRL key and then hit "fullscreen", it opened over the whole screen setup.

NVidia was always a b*tch in that case. I could use one preset only that either does fullscreen per monitor, or fullscreen on both monitors. But not both, and especially not with a hotkey.

How is that handled with AMD/ATI? Through EyeFinity? Or do I need a tool like UltraMon to get back the usage I want? (which in turn, is a CPU hog)

I really think about going AMD/ATI this time around. Price/power deal is excellent, it comes passive cooled (no modding needed, also 2 slots and not 3 after the modding) and it has 3 ports for displays in case I need more. NVidia could only use 2 at the same time.

Scotrick · Post by **Scotrick** » Fri Jun 21, 2013 11:51 am

I have had mixed results with 'passive' video cards.
Matrox has already been mentioned here once.
I don't need any particularly powerful video work for games but I do occasionally need a card that can run Photoshop without choking.

It seems like Matrox has a new range of more capable cards than the old P series I used very successfully for many years, but they finally ran out of steam when Waves of all people started asking for a more powerful video card to run the graphics of their plug-ins. It was a Direct 10 versus Direct 11 and above issue... I think, but it's been a while.

So, I've been thinking about trying the latest passive Matrox cards. Anyone have any experience with these?

Right now I'm using not passive cards but rather 'silent' NVIDIA cards with slow fans and giant heatsinks. I'll let you know their exact models when I can, but I think all of the cards mentioned here are more powerful these days.

I use Reason as my main DAW, and run three monitors off two cards, one for the Rack, one for the mixer, and one for the sequencer.

Just an FYI, I found the Matrox cards when I used them, to have the highest video quality and the lowest overhead of any video cards I've ever used. They even happily ran without the variety of 'helper' applications that many video cards sneak in there, like 3D, or HDMI audio, and so on.

So, just a friendly bump, and I hope you all can find a good solution for all of us in the same boat.

Recommendations for a silent GPU