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Sapphire 6870 or Gigabyte 6850 OC ??

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And what about the noise level of the Sapphire cards ?? Are they quiet ?
 
I dont think there is much difference, any card can get loud if the fan have to use high RPM. Its mainly a matter of the RPM and the RPM will go higher when the cooler is weak or wrong settings. Usualy, there is no need to cool down a GPU like mad, they can take lot of heat, much more than a CPU. Only should take care that the GPU wont exceed 100°, then all fine.

Just important to get a fan with auto fan adjust (not fixed fan). Sapphire surely is one of the leading manufacturer for Radeon cards so you cant truly make something wrong with. From my experience they have pretty good standart settings on the fan speed so its not always needed to make adjustments. The fan only goes max RPM when its close to 100° and thats important for not having the GPU to loud. In Idle mode as long as the fan (in that term theyr Vapor cooler) isnt exceeding 24%, the fan will stay pretty quiet.

Aswell important to know, those cards (and almost any nowadays) are blowing the air to almost any direction of the card, unlike cards (usualy reference design) who are having a clear out and input. Those cards are better in order to cool down the entire GPU and may cause lesser noise, however, about half of the heat will stay inside tower. So, the cooling performance from the PC system itself is aswell playing a role here, on how hot such a GPU will become. So its important to have some airflow inside case which is directly affecting the GPU in order to get even lesser heat, and therefore noise.
 
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I dont think there is much difference, any card can get loud if the fan have to use high RPM. Its mainly a matter of the RPM and the RPM will go higher when the cooler is weak or wrong settings. Usualy, there is no need to cool down a GPU like mad, they can take lot of heat, much more than a CPU. Only should take care that the GPU wont exceed 100°, then all fine.

Just important to get a fan with auto fan adjust (not fixed fan). Sapphire surely is one of the leading manufacturer for Radeon cards so you cant truly make something wrong with. From my experience they have pretty good standart settings on the fan speed so its not always needed to make adjustments. The fan only goes max RPM when its close to 100° and thats important for not having the GPU to loud. In Idle mode as long as the fan (in that term theyr Vapor cooler) isnt exceeding 24%, the fan will stay pretty quiet.

Aswell important to know, those cards (and almost any nowadays) are blowing the air to almost any direction of the card, unlike cards (usualy reference design) who are having a clear out and input. Those cards are better in order to cool down the entire GPU and may cause lesser noise, however, about half of the heat will stay inside tower. So, the cooling performance from the PC system itself is aswell playing a role here, on how hot such a GPU will become. So its important to have some airflow inside case which is directly affecting the GPU in order to get even lesser heat, and therefore noise.


That's a pretty useful post dude !! You made it pretty clear...

Which one would you choose in term of performance ?? Jd chose the 6870 because of the overclocking capabalities, but if we take both cards without OCing them (considering the gigabyte is factory OC), which one is the best ??
 
The Sapphire should have the edge because more SPs enabled, i guess even at OC the 6850 cant match it. (Im not checking out reviews yet, to much of work lol).

How much more you can get out of the Sapphire depends on how much the RAM is able to handle, in term they use Hynix RAM then there is some good possibility to boost it up even more (i have good experience with those on my 6950). GPU is only recommended to raise up a little in term you dont need to overvolt. Because overvolting may cause more heat and then you will have more noise which might not be joyful, just for a few more MHZ.
 
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