Noise Levels
The noise levels produced by a graphics card is an increasingly important consideration for PC users and Gamers these days. While fan noise is unlikely to ruin the gaming experience, no one likes a noisy graphics card and no one will argue with the fact that quieter is better. Many users are willing to sacrifice temperatures to gain a noise advantage, but with better cooling solutions being developed it is increasingly common to be able to get both better cooling and better acoustic performance than a reference solution on most custom cooled graphics cards from Nvidia and AMD partners. That said both AMD and Nvidia have stepped up their game too with regards to acoustics on their reference coolers. Ultimately, acoustics will always be a big deciding factor when there is often very little differentiation between graphics cards using the same GPUs. For more details on our acoustic testing procedures please see the test systems and procedures page.
After reading your review Ryan I’ve come to the conclusion I don’t like it as much as you, I would’ve taken XFX down a few more notches for having the cheek to print “The Ultimate Gaming Experience” on the box.
I agree, they definitely should have marketed it more towards the HTPC user. No one will ever buy this card for gaming because it is poor for gaming. This kind of card should come with single slot versions that have dual HDMI and single display port outputs (so it is capable of doing 4K playback). They should be sold as HTPC/Media playback cards.
What I wonder is how it fares compared to the passive Radeon 5550 I have. It’s a newer architecture and a little faster on the core clock (and a little lower power), but I wonder how this translates to performance.