Asus DirectCU & AMD Radeon HD 6850 Graphics Cards
I can’t wait for the day when ALL graphics cards are cooled nice and quietly so we won’t have to be worried about putting a jet turbine engine in our computers. Until that day comes, reviews like ours and this one from SPCR exist to make sure you don’t make that mistake. Here’s two of AMD’s new 6850 cards that do a surprisingly quiet job at it.
The system noise level was an impressive 14 dBA@1m when idle, a barely audible difference over the same system running without a video card. On load, the fan increased in speed by about 1000 RPM, generating an increase of 9 dB. It had an unappealing buzz, but the overall noise level was pretty good compared to most stock graphics cards. The fan is a little over-aggressive, in our opinion.