Low Profile Graphics card.

[chavo]

Hi folks,

My mate has recently built a little Media center and now he has decided that he wants to play games and buy a graphics card, problem is the case is a slimline one, think it is a thermaltake one. very nice case might I add!

Was thinking of just getting a 6600 or a 6800 GT and taking the bracket off but would rather get a purpose card.

Do they make them?


Thanks

[staffsMike]

You could check whether they make a PCI-E riser card for the case..

the only one i can think of is the ati x1300

http://www.shop-com.co.uk/op/~ATI_x1...9?sourceid=309

Quite a bit cheaper here

http://www.itcsales.co.uk/acatalog/D...deo_Cards.html

[chavo]

Thanks for that reply you have put me on a good track there. The case is a Antec Minuet.

[CrazyMonkey]

X1950Pro is a slimline card, very thin imo. Its also very cheap and a very good performer- far superior to a 6800.

[staffsMike]

Low profile is height not width

[jimbouk]

If you fancy nvidia they seem to top out at a 7300GS in low pofile. ATI have a couple of X1600 Pros, not cheap but they have hdmi for media centres: Asus one at Dabs.

Doesn't look like a riser card is an option for the Antec Minuet, you could measure and see how much height you have to play with and see if you could just take the bracket off a normal graphics card - going to have to find a reasonably low one though.

[chavo]

yeah i thought about just taking the bracket off one. He isnt a hard core gamer, in fact i dont think he has ever played a game in his life, he does like need for speed carbon as his mate has it, i think the 7300 might do the trick but it is on a 42" screen.

They any good thise 7300?

[jimbouk]

I think the GDDR3 and/or 128bit memory ones are meant to be reasonable, but I can't find any in low profile. They might only be available in full size and 7300gt (low profile are 7300gs). You'll want to avoid the turbo cache ones.

Either way it's a low end card - it'll be way better than onboard graphics, but no chance of turning all the settings up.

[chavo]

Thanks fella. Whats wrong with the turbo cache? I have never bought a bottom to mid graphics card so am not that familiar with the bottom end "Turbo" terminology!

[jimbouk]

Turbo cache is where the graphics card swipes some RAM from the rest of the computer. It's the same idea as what onboard graphics use and just tends to slow things down. ATI have the same thing under the name of "hypermemory".

It's not a bad thing if you aren't gaming, makes the boards cheaper. But even PCI-E x16 isn't fast enough to make using the system memory transparent so performance does drop.

[chavo]

Thanks Jimbouk,

learn something new every day! the board is a ASROCK, 945 somethin or other. It has this AGI x4 so i dont think it is as good as the PCI e 16 but it fits PCI E cards. dont really know much about this AGI.

really appreciate the help

[jimbouk]

Ah yes, you'll definitely want to avoid the turbo cache cards if it's only got PCI-E x4 bandwidth. Maybe a post in the Hardstuff forum to see which is the best low profile card.

The only other advice I can give you is to point you towards Tomshardware VGA Charts so you can see roughly between them, but it's only got a limited number of low end ones so specific reviews would be better for a detailed comparison. Good luck finding something!

[OilSheikh]

Gecube X1550?