£150 for a quiet card

[tindale]

Hello All,
In the past couple of weeks I've had to return an OCUK 8800GT 512 as the fan was constantly at 100%, and all controls were disabled in Rivatuner, Ntune etc, regardless of drivers (in Vista 64).

I read about a few problems with 8800GT fans, and was also dissapointed to read that it didn't hardware decode HD video, so I decided to go for a powercolour 3870 512, only to find that these are permanently at 100% fan speed, and its impossible to change it so this had to go back too

Before I go and spend any more money on returning cards, can anyone recomend a card in this price range which definitely reduces its fan speed when not under load (or at least allows me to do it through Rivatuner?). My machine works as a media centre, and I don't want it to sound like Hurrican Katrina is stuck inside somewhere whilst watching TV.

Thanks

 

[tindale]

I'm not sure about the 8800GT, but as I was quite keen on hardware HD decoding I didn't pursue it too far, and decided to go ATI instead.

However, on for the powercolor 3870 with the Flower type fan, I've read in several places that as its mildly overclocked powercolor decided to fix the fan at 100%, and there's not BIOS available that'll help (some think that the power comes directly from the 12v rail). I toyed with the idea of a fanmate, but I really don't want to have to remember to turn it up before gaming.

If everyone's sure that 3870s do allow the fans to adjust as standard I'll probably go and purchase a sapphire, or even the OCUK value model. I don't game at more than 1366x768 as I'm on an LCD TV, so I'll live with it not being up to 8800 standards, but I didn't want to have to send another one back because of the noise (great as OCUK are, I'm sure they'll loose patience eventually!!)