Looking For A Good Mid Range Card

[richardcousins]

Ive just switched to a new mATX case so I am wanting a new graphics card that is smaller than my current ATI X1900XT which is huge. Ive had this card for probably 3 years now and it has done me well. But it jsut takes up too much space in my new case and is a power hog.

I am ideally looking for a card that matches it specs or that are better.

I looked at a Gainward ATI Radeon HD4560 from here:

Gainward ATI Radeon HD 4650 512MB DDR2 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail


Though the RAM and clock speeds are slower than my current card which has a GPU clock speed of 625mhz and memory clock speed of 1425mhz.

Saying that do these specs matter? as im guessing the card is 3 years younger than my current card so it will have a better achitecture etc?

I am open to ideas for cards and I would love one with a silent fan or one that I can buy a silent fan for. I currently have a zalman cooler on my GFX card which I can transfer onto the new card I get if it supports it.

I did see the HIS ATI Radeon HD 4650 here:

HIS ATI Radeon HD 4650 Heatpipe Silent 512MB DDR2 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail

Though I dont think it will fit into my Lian Li V350 case due to height restrictions.

From what I can see its just might fit but its pure luck if it does.

Does anyone know if it they have got this card into this case?

 

[Big B]

While clockspeeds are important, you also need to factor in how much work is done per clock cycle. If GPU1 runs at 300MHz and does 4 units of work per cycle and GPU 2 runs at 800MHz, but only does 1 unit per cycle, GPU1 should have better performance. In the same period of time, GPU 1 can do 1200 units versus the 800 units GPU 2 can, even though GPU2 runs slower than 1/2 the speed of GPU2.

That's just an illustration, but clock speed isn't the best way to compare two different cards here. A lower-end card may run much faster than the high-end offering, but the high-end unit will blow it's slower counterpart away in performance.

In short don't look at the clockspeed as they don't indicate how efficient the graphics chip is.