Looking for cheap, quiet replacement for X1650 (RV530 0x1002:0x71C3 0x1043:0x01AC)

[l8gravely]

Hi all,

It's finally hit the point where I think I need to replace my X1650 (RV530 0x1002:0x71C3 0x1043:0x01AC) fanless 512M video card in my AMD Athlon X2 5200+ system with dual 1600x1200 Samsung 204B
monitors. I'm using a VGA and DVI output to drive them both nicely.

The system is almost six years old, but still doing great since it's got 8Gb of RAM and I personally don't play any major games on there. Mostly the kids play minecraft and now
FlightGear, which is where the problem comes in. Currently running Ubuntu 12.04, and thinking strongly about moving up to the latest Mint, since I don't like the direction Ubuntu is going in,
especially for me the old fart. The kids don't care all that much really, they just adapt and use whatever. So upgrading the OS is eminently doable.

So I'm looking on Newegg at cards and I'm trying to decide on something that's around $75, AMD, outputs for: DVI, VGA and HDMI; and quiet.
Performance boost would be really nice, but quietness is more important to me. Some of my options are:

SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6670 1GB 128-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card (11192-22-20G)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102988R

HIS H657FN2G Radeon HD 6570 2GB 128-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161422

HIS IceQ H657QO1G Radeon HD 6570 1GB 128-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161391

HIS iSilence 5 H667PNS1G Radeon HD 6670 1GB 128-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161408

SAPPHIRE Ultimate Radeon HD 6670 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card (100326UL)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102950

XFX HD-667X-ZHF3 Radeon HD 6670 1GB 128-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150542

All of the above should work, but I lean towards the Silent ones, if only because of the lack of a fan to crap out and die on me.
Any thoughts on newegg buys would be appreciated.

John

[asdfblah]

Well, I can only say: if you care about performance, go for the DDR5 model without even thinking about it. And the HD6000 series are well supported by the FOSS driver. Other than that, I can't say much about noise, resolution or other specs...

[l8gravely]

Thanks for the thoughts. Looking over my list again, I've already removed some of these choices. I also looked at 6000 series with 256 bit memory bandwidth and they're basically twice as expensive, twice as big and both have fans and will probably be quite noisy. I'm really not looking for super speed, just better performance and linux long term support. My R500 card has done great for the past five years, so going fanless is a no brainer, as long as I get some better performance.

So I've really narrowed it down to:

HIS iSilence 5 H667PNS1G Radeon HD 6670 1GB 128-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card for $80

SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6450 1GB 64-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card ( 100322L) $40

MSI R6450-2GD3H/LP Radeon HD 6450 2GB 64-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Low Profile Passive Low Profile Video Card $50


It's now turning into a question of whether the upgrade from 6450 to 6670 is worth it.

[gradinaruvasile]

The 128 bit cards usually use more power and the passively cooled versions might not be that cool - in any case make sure you have a case that has cooling fans on it.
Also, there are a few models (Asus for example) that have really big fans on them that are really quiet.
From that list of yours i would go with the 6670, the GDDR5 version - it is significantly faster than the DDR3 variant with no other drawback than price. The 6450 is really slow.

PS. For your needs a 65w APU would fit perfectly - you can have a really good IGP and up to 4 cores in the same power consumption as your CPU has alone.

[curaga]

The 6450 would only be a minor upgrade over your old card (less than 2x fps, perhaps around 1.5x). So depends how much perf you need.

[l8gravely]

The 128 bit cards usually use more power and the passively cooled versions might not be that cool - in any case make sure you have a case that has cooling fans on it.
Also, there are a few models (Asus for example) that have really big fans on them that are really quiet.
From that list of yours i would go with the 6670, the GDDR5 version - it is significantly faster than the DDR3 variant with no other drawback than price. The 6450 is really slow.

PS. For your needs a 65w APU would fit perfectly - you can have a really good IGP and up to 4 cores in the same power consumption as your CPU has alone.

I've looked and there's only one fanless 6670 card with DDR5, but it only have DP, HDMI and DVI outputs, and I really need VGA and DVI, or dual DVI, so that cuts that one out. I don't want to spend yet more
money on a DP to DVI or HDMI to DVI cable on top of the card cost.


What do you think of the 6570 vs the 6670? Is it worth the difference?

[pandev92]

stay away from amd...

http://www.amazon.com/MSI-NVIDIA-GeForce-PCI-Express-N640GT-MD1GD3/dp/B0089KJQFS

for example...

[l8gravely]

stay away from amd...

http://www.amazon.com/MSI-NVIDIA-GeForce-PCI-Express-N640GT-MD1GD3/dp/B0089KJQFS

for example...

This is useless advice, esp when you don't bother to backup your suggestions. But to explain myself a bit more, I'm trying to stay completely open source on my system, so AMD is a better bet than the
closed source nVidia drivers. I've had enough problems with them on a much older system my kids use.

So please, don't bother to reply if you don't have something useful to contribute with actual numbers.

Thanks,
John

P.S. Happy New Year to everyone.

[pandev92]

This is useless advice, esp when you don't bother to backup your suggestions. But to explain myself a bit more, I'm trying to stay completely open source on my system, so AMD is a better bet than the
closed source nVidia drivers. I've had enough problems with them on a much older system my kids use.

So please, don't bother to reply if you don't have something useful to contribute with actual numbers.

Thanks,
John

P.S. Happy New Year to everyone.

if you want to have a totally open source system and very low performance ok, amd is for you.

[Nuc!eoN]

outputs for: DVI, VGA and HDMI

Just in case you don't know, A DVI output already provides both, a digital and an analog signal. In my experience adapters from dvi to vga always are included in the package (in case the graphics card is dvi-only). So you don't necceserally need a card with vga outputs