i was thinking, what would happen if you took this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125357 took off the fans and put this below it angled upward at 45 degrees? would it cool the card quietly? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835608004 all the stock fans suck and the aftermarkets suck too.
not a good idea. why would you angle the fans? the idea is to blow air onto the grills to cool them as the heat is transfered to them from the hot chips. i agree that stock and aftermarket fans suck. however, imo i think the fans on AMD stock heatsinks are really reliable. i never seen one fail. you could maybe get 3 AMD heatsinks of the same kind from ebay and rig up something custom of your own. as far as quiet, you can have both quiet and powerful but reliability is hard to say as it falls in aftermarket territory. if your going to bother changing the fans go for reliability.
If you really want to make your card quiet, you might consider using liquid cooling. But bear in mind that this is a costly solution if done properly.
what do you think? 2 fanless 6770 in a proper case http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125386 or one 6950? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125385
the 6770 has a faster core clock ability to overclock claims to run very cool even without fans almost half as cheap best bang for the buck also the plastic and fans were regarded as cheap material on the 6950 Cons: Im not really that impressed with the plastic fan guard. Its very flimsy and cheap looking. Suppose it keeps the weight down. I also noticed that there was no factory seal or shrink wrap on the package which makes me a little uncomfortable. This after watching a youtube vid that showed a kid unboxing one from newegg that had the same issue. Hmmmm? bad quality control from DIAMOND? also im not even sure why diamond is in the video card game? they were good back in the old days until voodoo took the spotlight. some more info on the gigabyte http://www.kokeytechnology.com/hard...eap-amd-radeon-hd-6770-video-card-hits-japan/
huh, that was supposed to link to this gigabyte version of the 6950 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125385&Tpk=gigabyte 6950
okay so... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...na&AID=10521304&PID=4175293&SID=18epetnu43pxk vs http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...na&AID=10521304&PID=4175293&SID=1n6yzsm0j1wlb well there is obviously a price difference of around $100. they both have the same amount of memory except the higher priced one has 256 bit memory interface and the other has 128 bit. some little differences in core and memory clock but the streaming process' is almost twice that of the cheaper one. theoretical benchmarks and power consumption http://www.hwcompare.com/6110/radeon-hd-6770-1gb-vs-radeon-hd-6950/ the 6950 uses a lot more power than the 6770. more power usually means more performance and more heat thus why it has fans. the question here isn't which one is better cause obviously the 6950 is better. what types of games are you going to be playing? what are the specs of your system?
actually, i meant how would two of the silent cards in crossfire compare to that single 6950? or maybe i should just go with one silent card and buy a new one every two years? also, the rest of the system hasn't been decided on yet. i'm probably not going to game that heavily, but i would like to be able to play the witcher 2 and the upcoming stalker game on full.
as far as sli/crossfire you might want to take a look at this: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/245454-33-crossfire-faqs as far as 6000 series vs 5000 series yes there are 5 series that can overpower a 6 series. the jump from 5 to 6 is just merely a new group number in the series as well as new features and updates. usually as it goes up in the 100's it gets better in that group. so a 6250 wouldn't beat a 5970 but a 6990 would. check this out: http://www.techimo.com/forum/graphi...radeon-5000-series-vs-radeon-6000-series.html