X800XT - how much better is water over ATI Silencer 4?

Viper87227

Viper87227

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I got a good deal on a PCIE X800XT....$380 with the silencer already installed. When I started XT shopping, I had my heart set on water, but now that I have this, am I going to need it? Will the card benifit alot from it? It certianly would be a cheap upgrade...i could sell the silencer for $20 and buy a maze4 for $50, but I am looking at it from the mantiance side of things. I really dont want to take apart my system, drain my water, recut all my hoses and get the maze mounted, then refill and put it all back toghether. Its alot of work, and IMO not worth it for an extra 10mhz on the core. Thoughs?
 
Dunno... but a silencer on a 6800GT drops its temps by like 6C.. a water block by roughly 30C. There is no comparison, water can nudge out a XP90 mounted on the thing, like it can on cpus. These silencer things are good for a mix of temps, quiet, and ease of use. They're cool, but not Hard.

Their popularity will have me criticized but it's just the truth. A couple of degress and a couple of decibels is all too expect. Thats what it does, that's what it's for. With water and how hot stock cards run, you are almost always looking at an increase in clock, and even have room for vmodding etc. It's your decision, you may not need it... but make no mistakes about it, water stomps the silencers.
 
texuspete00 said:
Dunno... but a silencer on a 6800GT drops its temps by like 6C.. a water block by roughly 30C. There is no comparison, water can nudge out a XP90 mounted on the thing, like it can on cpus. These silencer things are good for a mix of temps, quiet, and ease of use. They're cool, but not Hard.
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Yeah, but if you look at some reviews, the ATI Silencer 4 is better than the NV5. Temps go down about 10C idle and 15C load.
 
My X800 XT never goes above 40 C at load, and that's with a 4 GHz prescott in the loop. Didn't increase my overclock too much, but I think my gpu is undervolted, because when I clock it up, it never gets artifacts, it just freezes. Still, it's plenty fast for me.

Much better water cooled, IMO.
 
Viper87227 said:
Yeah, but if you look at some reviews, the ATI Silencer 4 is better than the NV5. Temps go down about 10C idle and 15C load.
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I dont know how good the original coolers are. I dont know why they would do such a bad job on Nv's that they can barely nudge out the Ultra stock air coolers then. My point is really that they're not in the same league and don't really serve the same purpose. With water, you can expect at least a moderate clock increase most of the time .

Well what are the figures? A waterblock will get you cpu like temps... and thats straight headroom for an overclocker... because the things are designed to run at temps would make a cpu quiver. I dunno man... I'm a nV boy and have only a gpu in my loop.
 
I have a watercooled FX5800 Ultra that runs at 47C.

'Nuff said.
 
I've got a pe in a loop with a a64 3500 and idle is around 25degrees, load around 33degrees....all stock....id say go for it.
 
Tigerblade said:
I've got a pe in a loop with a a64 3500 and idle is around 25degrees, load around 33degrees....all stock....id say go for it.
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I wish I could find some before/after CPU temps when adding a GPU to the mix. I dont want to bring down my CPU overclock for me GPU.
 
I have two watercooled PCs (CPU & GPU blocks on both) , one with an unlocked 6800 , one with an X800XTPE.
Both have heavily overclocked/overvolted cpus & overclocked GPUs , both GPUs stay below 40°C at all times.
I don't see how any aircooler would be able to do that.
Better yet , on the 6800 , I can overvolt it (through softmod) with only a minimal rise in temperature (1-2°C vs 15-25°C on the stock cooler).

I didn't gain much in mhz on either card (except through overvolting the 6800).
I didn't lose anything from the cpu overclocks , but my rads were obviously enough for the job , cpu temperatures rose by 2-3 degrees.

One tiny little note though , the problem isn't that ATI silencer is better than the nvidia version , it's more like the reference ATI coolers are PATHETIC.
I had an 9800pro , I have an X800XTPE , honestly I don't know what ATI is thinking , putting underpowered POS on expensive VGAs.
 
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