120's are the same size as a gfx fan and would be loud meaning it was a bad case with small fans.. Mine has 2 140mm and 2 230mm and one 120 mm.  i will say my gateway case was twice as loud as this one(azza solano 1000) with half the fans running at lower speeds. better designed cases with good fans will cool better than running without sides on one.

bigger fans can go at lower speeds and have the same air flow... Also my pc is on a table and there is still plenty of dust that gets stopped by the filters.  My gfx fan doesnt even get close to 50% even on load. Plus the noise I was talking about is from being at 50%. I  listened to it using ati overdrive just to check it out. And my gfx card tops out at 52 degrees stock... much cooler than your 67. It even keeps it that cool when the room temp is over 35 celcius. My NB, SB and HDD never go higher than 5 degrees above room temperature.  Of course your probably using a different card than me(4890) which will be different results.  But you can do whatever works for you of course.

No man....who told you that? 120 mm are standard case fans.

I dont know why you have that impression that my last case was loud, but it wasnt. It was just an average priced case, nothing too special, but not bad either.

About your card, as far as I know, the ATI 4800 series operate at about 10 degrees lower than the Nvidia GT200, but they have a lower tolerance in high temps.

Overall, I know its better if you have a really good case, but the no noise thing is really sweet for me, since my case is so quiet. And all these fans you have in your case, sure produce considerable noise. My card doesnt get 50% either. Its always on 40%. The 48% I mentioned was with extreme overclocking that removed immediately, and was for testing purposes only.

Of course there is dust stopped by your filters, since the fans draw all the dust in your room. I have dust anywhere else BUT not in my case.

The NB and HD (SB does heat up anyway) of course would be very low temps with fans in your case. Thats the only real difference.

The big fans, like 230 mm, usually are lower DB, but a produce noise with more bass, which can be a little annoying sometimes. The other fans, 120 or 140, are definitely "hearable" and I cant trade what I have with that (even quiet) noise.

I thought the same thing since every other case I've had was alot louder but this one is pretty quiet..(for me)  but hey no decibels is better than a little(24 dba). Of course this is a 100$ case.

Yes, and the noise is what really bothers me. 19 dba is just too good to be true

p.s. But the 24 dba with so many fans, must be the lowest case (closed) I have ever heard of.

It definitely appears that waiting will provide the best answer.  I don't particularly want a gimped 480 GTX and want the full 512 cores. 

I'm going to have to research to see if it is better to go with a 5970 or (2) 5870's for ATI's top contender...

Asus has a 5970 thats coming that will have the mem and core clocks overclocked (with any luck hopefully closer to teh 5870's)

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/asus_ares_baddest_hd_5970_block

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2 5870's are faster than 1 5970. But they cost more. So its really your choice. However, even just 1 5870 can play any game available with max quality and resolution, and still has power to spare, for extreme antialising settings, etc.

The reason I dont like Nvidia's 480 and 470, is because they go really high temperatures (up to 97 C), and draw more power than the 5870. Hell, a 480 draws almost as much power as a 5970

Edit: Holy sh!t, this 5970 by Asus is a real BEAST!   2 8-pin and 1 6-pin for power supply oO and 2.5 slots taken due to the fat heatsink. This card screams POWEEEEEEEER!!!

I know and that Asus card is Damn sexy!

I ended up going with the 480 GTX by EVGA and comes factory overclocked, not that it really matters though.

It was in stock a couple weeks ago for about 2 minutes and i missed it.  it was in stock on saturday for a few minutes, i missed it, sunday was the same story.  A new shipment came in today and i got the notice when i was leaving work and had 1 1/2 hours to drive home, though i would miss it.  Jumped on after i ate a quick dinner and it was in stock w00t! 5 minutes later they were all gone lol.

Yeah, the new 400 series by Nvidia are pretty scarce. Congrats on your new card!

But same goes for the ATI 5970 though. Not enough of them at stock.

Also, EVGA is 1 of the best vendors out there, IMO. I happen to have a GTX 260 by EVGA myself

"Can I haz cookies nao?"

I got me a new card that is a few steps above what I had and has more video memory and my Windows score went down. I still can't figure that out.

What do you mean Windows score?

The thing that Windows Vista and 7 have?

"Can I haz cookies nao?"

Yes. It's caled "System Rating".

Did the graphics score go down or the total score?

Graphics score came down thereby bringing the total score down to a 3.7. Makes no sense as i was running a Gforce 7900 GS with 256 MB memory. The new card is a Gforce 8400 GS with 512 MB memory. Overall many of my programs run better with the new card.

Makes no sense to me.

Just FYI, the second number of an nvidia card is actually its power rating (in terms of GPU speed). The first number is more of a generation number. A 7900 GS is actually faster than an 8400GS. The perceived performance increase is from the higher memory.

Well as long as it keeps up with Command & Conquer than I'm happy. It beats the onboard Gforce 6150.

It does support new graphics technology though..  It shouldn't give you a lower score however.   Only thing I can think of that made it slower then is that you haven't run the performance test for a while and you pc is dirtier than it was last time you ran it......Last time I cleaned my pc then ran the test everything jump up almost half a point.

Uh, yes it should. A 2.8 Ghz CPU is slower than a 3.2 Ghz one. Why would it be different for GPUs?

The 7900 GS core clock is 500Mhz. The 8400 GS core clock is 450Mhz. Every new generation brings new software and possibly new hardware, but core clock is still core clock and there are always consumer, mid range, and enthusiast level cards for each generation.

the base 7900 is 450 if your looking at one that is 500 then it was overclocked be the company that made that particular one

Sorry, I just picked the first two examples of each card to compare. The 7900 GS is more often overclocked because it's (or was, I guess) a midrange card targeted towards gamers.  The 8400 GS is designed for media PCs.

The test was run on a new build and a new installation of Windows 7.

Most useless thing in Windows, IMO.

LOL

A 8400 GS is far worse than a 7900 GS. The amount of RAM difference doesnt matter so much, when you compare the high-end older gen. 7900, with the low-end newer gen. 8400.

You downgraded your graphics card, LMAO

First of all, the Windows performance "tester", is NOT a benchmark. It is only a ~generalized estimation of your PC's performance rating.

Secondly, if you want to really test your whole PC's performance, use PC mark, or something similar to that. For games, there is no doubt that the most accurate benchmark is 3D mark Vantage (or 2006 for XP version), and most of the official games' benchmarks, like Crysis bench or Far Cry 2 bench for example, are really good.

And lastly, the 8400 has slightly better graphics than the 7900, but the performance difference is huge. But what does it matter if it can display with better quality in a game, if it goes with 10 FPS? From the 2 cards, I would pick the 7900 every time, without a doubt.

The clock rates dont make a lot of difference in GPUs. What usually makes all the difference, is its architecture, its #processing cores, the way it manages GPU & RAM load, etc etc.

The higher clock rates, are simply to give an extra boost to each card.

There is a reference graphics card Hierarchy Chart, that I find quite useful:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-geforce-gtx-480,2598-6.html

As you can see, the 8400 is in the same tier as GF 4 Ti 4600, thats pretty low, while the 7900 is 8 whole tiers above it! 1 tier, is a generalized level of performance, it doesnt mean that these cards in the tier are identical or something, it just means they can compete each other on performance levels. I dont recommend upgrading to a tier right above yours, as it doesnt make a lot of difference to make your money well-spent. However, 2-3 tiers is a lot of difference, and I usually follow that rule: To always upgrade at least 2 tiers up. In Nvidia cards: GS means a slower, cheaper version, but also using less power, while being cooler than a standard version (lets say 7900 GT for instance). A 8400, is already at the low-end category, so its GS version, you can imagine how low it gets.

Anyway, the fact is that: 7900 > 8400

"Can I haz cookies nao?"

Then the 8400 should be better since it has new architecture and better management.  It also supporst directX10 which the 7 series does not......Also when I had a 8400 gs myself it overclocked quite well.  funny my pcgamer has the 8400 higher.   Must be fanboyism at play on one of the sites.(both are usually pretty trustworthy)

Not necessarily saying that tomshardware is the one but who knows?

find a site with actual benchmarks or do your own.

looks like morpheas is right here check out these.

http://freestone-group.com/video-card-stability-test/benchmark-results.html

Hmm....how can I say this.... I dont have a reason to research over how much difference in performance the 2 cards got. Both are pretty old and slow, and I wouldnt buy each of the 2.

However, kona0197 has both, and if he wants, he can easily run a benchmark, and see the exact numbers on each of the 2 cards.

I know that the 7 series dont support DX10, but like I said, if the 8400 runs with 10 FPS in game, who cares about the better image quality?

I didnt mean what you said with the architecture, I think my point was clear, it doesnt have to do with power consumption or heat generated. In both of these areas, the 8400 is excellent, as it is meant to be a low power card, suitable for HTPCs and not for enthusiast gamer PCs.

As for the fanboyism part, I dont see why tomshardware would deliberately put specifically the 8400 in a lower tier level than its real one. Whats going on? Do they hate 8400's exclusively?

Lets say it is 1 tier above, does that make it better than the 7900?

"Can I haz cookies nao?"