Which video card is the quietest for the MacPro?

[hajime]

Could anybody please rank the following cards in terms of quietness? In case of difficulty, is your system using either of the top two listed cards very quiet? Thanks.

ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB
Nvidia GeForce 8800GT 512MB
ATI Radeon HD 3870 Mac & PC Edition

 

[alphaod]

Well the less powerful the graphics card, the slow the fan needs to be. Besides you could always install a third-party heatsink.

 

[keltorsori]

Go for the 3870 and get an arctic cooling heatsink. I'm running mine fanless with no heat issues on Final Cut, Motion, or Aperture (I don't play games)

 

[rpaloalto]

well I have seen allot of noise complaints for the 2600, on apples own site
here

I have the 8800, and it is very quite even after hours of gaming.

 

[stainlessliquid]

Well the less powerful the graphics card, the slow the fan needs to be. Besides you could always install a third-party heatsink.

Not true when it comes to fans. Cheaper less powerful cards tend to have cheaper and louder fans since they have cheaper smaller heatsinks. The more expensive cards have high quality fans and huge heatsinks, when they are idling they can be whisper quiet. Unless you get a fanless version of the cheaper cards they are pretty much never quieter than the premium gaming cards.

The 3870 has the biggest fan so its probably the quietest, since the smaller the fan the more noise it will make. But the heatsink isnt as big as the 8800's, so it may have to work harder.

 

[MacinJosh]

I would like to resurrect this old thread as I see no reason to create a new one.

I am looking to get an OpenCL video card for my 1,1 Mac Pro. I would like something that has some oomph but not loud at the same time. I'm a casual gamer playing offline single-player games (internet connection not capable of online games) such as Civ V, SC2 and hopefully Diablo III.

The current 7300GT doesn't cut it. I really appreciate my Mac Pro's quietness and would like to keep it that way. What would give me the best bang for the decibel? Any strong passive-cooled options?