Passive Graphics Cards: Would you buy one for gaming?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The IGPs in the A8 CPUs are around GT440 or HD5570 GDDR3 level in many games:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5771/t...3770k-review/9

The IGP in the A8 is around 20% to 30% faster than the A6 IIRC.

I did some extended FRAPs runs in a couple of games at 1440X900 with the A6-3670K myself:

Cat's Hexus A6-3670K self-build AMD APU bundle REVIEW THREAD

D3 and DiRT2 ran quite well at quite decent settings. Hard Reset at high settings actually was not too bad although there were some dips under 25FPS. Civ5 after 300 turns could be a bit choppy when zooming in though,although the settings were not high. However,I did set the RAM manually to 1600MHZ,as the motherboard defaulted to 1333MHZ.

[shaz]

Passive cards still require airflow, so you've potentially got just as much noise as an active card - more if it means you now have to run a fan at the front of a case that you didn't have to before.

But they are another option that lets you decide where you want fans and which fans to have - a well designed case could have a sound proofed front for example, while drawing air in from somewhere else and using an exhausting slow fan to ensure good airflow over the passive fins.

[kalniel]

What cooler and stuff do you have on your current rig Kal? I mean you've got a great cpu, loads ofd quality ram... a good board....

how quiet is it if you removed your 4870?

The 4870 is quiet actually unless at full pelt - I swapped in a 7870 and it's slightly noisier in real usage.

My system is fairly noisy for a few reasons:
- the case has lots of ventilation, which means poor sound insulation
- the X58 chipset runs quite hot, even after undervolting, which means I need an additional side fan to keep the northbridge cool. (Might not be necessary without the 4870 anymore, but I prefer not to take the chance, I need a cool northbridge to keep DPC latency low for audio stuff)
- my PSU fan has started clicking

For the CPU I've got a corsair A50, with a thermaltake 140mm PVM fan. It's subjectively quiet, but the wooshing adds to the general fan noise.

Other fans are on the graphics card (2 PVM fans - sapphire 7870), PSU (135mm PVM XFX), side case intake (120mm no speed control), front case intake (200mm no speed control), rear case exhaust (120mm, resistor lowered speed)

[DLUK]

If your gaming you generally wear nice headphones or use speakers so GPU noise should never be a issue (if it is, your headphones or speakers probably need a upgrade...) Of course if you want passive ultra low noise for a HTPC or silent use at night etc, then it's normally probably best to build a silent rig for that use and a proper games machine as well where fan noise isn't a issue. If you try and mix the hardware it either costs way more than it should have or you 'Gimp' the games performance drastically!

With stuff like the Pi for a silent HTPC you should easy have enough budget for a proper games rig on top. Just turn off the games rig when not using it!

Good example is people now placing Pi's inside games PC or mounting behind their PC monitor and then you boot either as needed! If the cost of soundproofing the games rig goes over the cost of a extra Rasberry Pi think hard about 'are 2 machines better than 1!'

The IGP rigs and combos from AMD and Intel are great for laptops, they mean many laptops can 'game' a bit, that would never have been able to before. But they are still very gimped vs a half decent games rig for actual gaming (by gimped if you like games at 720p with no AA_AF and low-meduim settings they are fine!). The low cost, eco, low power all-in-ones like the Raspberry Pi, get round this as you can mount them inside a games rig as a silent HTPC-media server or behind even your TV-PC monitor. If your smart enough to build a PC, your smart enough to get some joy from a Pi (and there are other sub £100 'all in ones now' as well). So like when Trillion dollar car makers try and make a 4x4 also a super sports car and the results are a bit 'meh!' and often very pricey same when you try and mix passive-low noise HTPC and actual games PC.

[isabella]

About image quality, can we assume that you have enough airflow and get a pair of passive cards crossfire/sli. Technically image quality is not a concern if enough budget is allowed.