X1900 - is it silent?

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Hey, I got one typical Mac Pro with 7300 card.

Now I'd like to purchase another one, but with ATI X1900. Since I need to have this factured in the USA and sent to Europe, I want to make sure if I'll be satisfied.

The only thing that worries me is if ATI will be as silent as native Mac Pro's Geforce. Silent system is my priority.

Did anyone ever compare two Mac's with these two different cards and could say that there is no/is little/is noticeable difference in generated noise?

Thanks!
 
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Mac Pro 2.66GHz Quad, 1GB RAM
I cant imagine it being that much of a difference, its just a small fan.

If you realy dont like it you can always get a upgraded passive cooler.
 
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>I cant imagine it being that much of a difference, its just a small fan.

Then I believe you've never had the pleasure of using a PC with a "small fan".

The fan makes all the difference - how silent it is and how long it lives (when it starts makin saw-like sound). I just don't know how many bucks did ATI push in this specific video card. I just hope apple DID pay attention not to spoil their best system by relying on a vidcard with "made-in-china" fan.

And twice power in X1900 compared to 7300 doesn't come from nothing. If there is twice power, there is more heat. More heat = more cooling. More cooling = higher RPM on the fan. higher RPM = more noise.

Simple as that.

Thanks anyway - I'm thinking about the passive cooling you wrote of, but to my knowledge, passive cooling is only available to as high as geforces 6900 and not top-shelf performance cards.
 
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PowerBook G4 15 inch 1.5 GHz, iMac
I've heard one with the ATi and the nVidia right beside eachother. Not too much of a difference, the ATi was only a teensy bit louder.
 
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Black MacBook 2GB, Mac Pro 2.66Ghz 3GB X1900.
The X1900 fan is noisier. I didn't like the noise.

The fan is variable dependant on GPU load.

I replaced the stock cooler with an Artic Cooling X2 accelero and it's now as silent as a fanless model. Constant 2000 rpm fan and much better cooling than stock cooler.
 
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I have the X1900 in my 8-core and it is absolutely silent... of course; I don't use my server to play games so maybe I'm not driving the graphics card hard enough to cause it to make noise. I've had all 8-CPUs working at 100% and everything is remarkably quiet, ESPECIALLY compared to my old quad G5!

Joe
 
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I have the X1900 in my 8-core and it is absolutely silent... of course; I don't use my server to play games so maybe I'm not driving the graphics card hard enough to cause it to make noise. I've had all 8-CPUs working at 100% and everything is remarkably quiet, ESPECIALLY compared to my old quad G5!

Joe

what did you do to max out all the cores, jw?
 

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