Budget PCI-E card - passive cooling

[almichev]

Hi all. Am looking for a 512mb passive cooled pci-e card. I'll be using it for watching dvds, digital art and photo manipulation - no gaming. My budget limit is £50.

Also, my system uses DDR2 ram. So is it worth considering a DDR3 graphics card?

Many thanks.

 

[matt_fsr]

Without being sarcastic, you're asking too much for a £50 budget there.

Generally the 512Mb graphics cards have slower RAM, and more of it - but overall, are actually slower than their 256Mb counterparts.

Try this:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-127-AS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1010

or this:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-084-PC&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=938

Do some reviews, check benchmarks etc - or decide depending on which cooler you reckon is the best.

At the end of the day neither of these are awesome gaming cards, but for playback and stills editing / manipulation they'd massively wipe the floor with onboard graphics or older tech.

Without reviewing, my vote would be the 8500, but im a bit of an Nvidia fanboy, so do your research is my advice. Have fun!

 

[Lanz]

You dont need 512MB. 256MB will be fine. DDR2 or DDR3 doesnt matter.

Any passive cheapo card will suit your needs, ATI HD3450, Nvidia 8400GS/8500GT - something like that.

I recently bought a HD3450 to replace the 8500GT I had, I think ATI/AMD are ahead on their drivers at the moment and have improved greatly (I used to swear on Nvidia for HTPCs)

 

[matt_fsr]

Change your sig then Lanz!

 

[Sankari]

Hi all. Am looking for a 512mb passive cooled pci-e card. I'll be using it for watching dvds, digital art and photo manipulation - no gaming. My budget limit is £50.

Also, my system uses DDR2 ram. So is it worth considering a DDR3 graphics card?

Many thanks.

You don't need 512Mb or DDR3 for this.

Get a Sapphire Radeon HD3470 256MB DDR2 PCIE DVI. It's passively cooled and can be picked up for <£45.

 

[spicypixel]

You don't need 512Mb or DDR3 for this.

Get a Sapphire Radeon HD3470 256MB DDR2 PCIE DVI It's passively cooled and can be picked up for <£45.

Agreed.