XFX Dual Fan 6xxx Cards

I

Iron Eagle

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 2, 2010
Messages
270
I've had enough of the loud noise of the reference 6xxx series cooler so I am contemplating getting an XFX card with the dual fans. According to reviews they are supposed to be spectacular with regard to noise and temperature. Can anyone here who own one of these (XFX only - I like their warranty and the looks of their cards :D) provide some information on their personal experiences? As far as I know, the following XFX cards have the dual fans:

XFX 6850
XFX 6870
XFX 6870 Black Edition
XFX 6950

Also, two of the 1GB XFX 6950s listed on Newegg have the vapor chamber cooling. How are those in comparison to the dual fan cards?
Thanks for any input!
 
I don't know how well they cool but there's one thing you should know if you missed it, those only have 1gb of VRAM
 
Yup, I know. It may even seem stupid since the 1GB 6950 is ~$270 and the 2GB 6950 is ~$260 AR, but I game on a single 1920x1200 monitor and care more about the reduction in noise rather than the ability to flash it to a 6970.
 
I see - makes sense. I opted for the 2gb ones even though I only play at 1080p not only because I can unlock the shaders but also because I figure you can always force alot of image quality improvements for games where the framerate is overkill which will use alot of VRAM. Over 1gb I would imagine but I don't know for sure.
 
Is your 6950 the reference card? What do you think about your 6950's temperature and noise? From what I hear the reference 6950/6970 use vapor chamber cooling, which is better than what is used on the reference 6870.
 
They do still run a little bit warm. Before I was using a sabertooth x58 motherboard which ran the two cards right against each other. I could hear them spin up under load during something intense like Crysis.

But since then I've switched back to my Asus p6t mobo which spaces them apart better and that's helped alot. I only really hear them spin up during stress tests like heaven dx11 benchmark but never in-game. If you give it more time, I'm sure more non-reference designs will come out, even for the 2gb versions.
 
If you get one, let us know how you like it. I'm trying to decide 6950 vs. 560 and noise is one of my concerns.
 
I ended up going with the 6950 dual fan. It will arrive later today and I will update this thread later.
 
I've just ordered one too. I previously had dual fan 6850 and gtx 560, both of which were reasonably quiet at idle. The dual fans can get loud at load, but I haven't heard the xfx model yet.
 
I just picked up the xfx dual fan 6850 and it's whisper quiet. I think even at 80-90% fanspeed it's quieter than my non-reference 4850 was at idle. I didn't realize how loud my old 4850 had become lol.
And for temps, it's only slightly overvolted as it didn't raise the ceiling much, so max temps are around 60-65c when stressing.
 
I have the XFX dual fan 6950 as well. I actually returned the 2GB XFX 6950 for this one. I run three monitors so both cards run hot (~ 65C) when doing things like word processing, email, internet browsing. The difference is in the noise the cards make. This dual fan 6950 is much more quiet than the 2GB version w/ the stock fan.

I can't hear it over my PSU fan.
 
I've had my dual fan XFX 6950 1GB since Friday and I LOVE it.

Like the posters above, I find it whisper-quiet both at idle and max. I have a mid-tower Lian-Li case with a front cover so I don't have the best case airflow, but with an AB fan profile the card idles around 40C-44C and maxes around 75C when I turn up everything in CCC. Considering I picked this over an at the time equally priced XFX 6950 2GB I'm glad to say I do not regret my decision.

I highly recommend the dual-fan editions to anyone who value having little noise. I was hesitant to believe what I read in the reviews about this card being whisper quiet even at max load, but they were not lying.
 
I've had mine installed for a couple of hours, as shown here:

1216646872_sKcys-XL.jpg


Very quiet at idle, you can maybe here some air moving. Pretty cool in my system too:

1216630306_9nfF2-XL.jpg


You can here it when it spins up. I maxed out at 74 degrees and 70% fan speed after 45 minutes of BF BC2. As you can see, the fan speed recovers very quickly after load ends:

1216630321_Lqy46-XL.jpg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top