GeForce GTS 450 passive cooled GPU from Sparkle

GeForce GTS 450 Passive Cooling version
from SPARKLE, model number SXS4501024D5SNMP

I wrote about ATI Radeon HD5770 passively cooled graphic card from Gigabyte just few days ago, so it's only fair to have an article of its competitor too. GTS 450 was introduced 13.9.2010, and several manufacturers introduced their own versions in the very same day. This graphic card is on the market today with a variety of clock speeds, voltage levels and cooling solutions. Only fanless GTS 450 was introduced by Sparkle

In tests for fan cooled GTS 450 cards, idle temperatures of only 30-36 degrees have been measured. Low temperature is promising and it seems like passive cooling is clearly possible for GTS 450. Power consumption at idle stage is not officially told, but it's supposed to be <16W. In idle state  power consumption of a reference card beats HD5770 by couple of watts.

At load power consumption is quite high for a passively cooled card. Nvidia is providing a TDP value of 106W, notifying that this a a "real world number" and for example furmark (100% load test) can exceed this. Between reference cards measured load consumptions are close to those measured with  ATI Radeon HD5770, so these cards should emit equal amount of heat in their maximum use.  However, HD5770 gives us better results in performance, so it's obvious that it's full power is not yet needed when GTS 450 is running at its max. However, temperatures at full load (Furmark test) for GTS 450 have been well under 70C, which is another promise for passive cooling possibility. Decent airflow in the case is still important.

Conclusion: We need to see a passively cooled version of both cards tested side by side before we can tell which card is actually better for passively cooled systems. Before that you can try to get an idea with following basic data:

	NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450	Radeon HD 5770
GPU Engine Specs:
CUDA Cores	192	-
Stream Processors	-	800
Graphics Clock (MHz)	789 MHz	850 MHz
Processor Clock (MHz)	1576 MHz	850 MHz
Memory Specs:
Memory Clock (MHz)	3760 effective	4800 effective
Standard Memory Config	1 GB GDDR5	1 GB GDDR5
Memory Interface Width	128-bit	128-bit
Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec)	~60.0	83.2
Feature Support:
Multi GPU support	2-Way NVIDIA SLI®-ready	ATI CrossFireX™
3D Ready	yes	yes
Microsoft DirectX	11	11
OpenGL	4.0	5.0
Bus Support	PCI-E 2.0 x 16	PCI-E 2.1 x 16
Certified for Windows 7	yes	yes
Display Support:
HDMI resolution	1080p dual-stream	1080p dual-stream
Maximum Digital Resolution	2560x1600	2560x1600
Maximum VGA Resolution	2048x1536	2048x1536
Standard Display Connectors	Mini HDMI	Mini HDMI
	Two Dual Link DVI	Two Dual Link DVI
Multi Monitor	yes	yes
HDCP	yes	yes
HDMI	1.3 (1.4a*)	1.3
Supported video formats	?	H.264, VC-1, and MPEG-2
Audio Support:
Audio Input for HDMI	Internal	Internal
Channels via HDMI	7.1	7.1
Supported formats	AC-3, AAC, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD	AC-3, AAC, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD
Power Specs:
Idle Graphics Card Power (W)	<16 W**	18 W
Maximum Graphics Card Power (W)	106 W	108 W
* Support for HDMI 1.4a including GPU accelerated Blu-ray 3D support, x.v.Color, HDMI Deep Color, and 7.1 digital surround sound will be added in a Release 260 driver.
** Estimation

I hope to soon find a test where these cards are standing against each other. Until that I give my recommendation for Sparkle GTS 450 Passive Cooling version too (previously given to the other card).

Yours

Silenssimo

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Terms silent and quiet in marketing computers

Hello World, this is my first ever blog and thereby my first ever blog sentence! I start with an article about two mixed up terms "silent" and "quiet".
My name is Simo, I'm a finnish teacher of mathemathics, physics and music. (Nice combination?) I'm from a musical family and sound surrounding has been important for me since I was a little boy. That's just one of the reasons I moved to countryside nine years ago. I live in a middle of swampy area in western Finland, in a tiny village called Suojoki. It's quiet here. Not silent, but nice and quiet. It would be quiet enough to easily put up an Anechoic chamber for noise level measurement purpose. Thought of it has passed my mind already few times, but so far I've been happy with building up few quiet and silent computers for me and my friends.

In all my following texts "silent" should be read as "inaudible to the listener" and "quiet" as "not disturbing the listener". But even a loud computer might be considered quiet in some places, audibility of one noise source is always dependent on all the other sounds - and surrounding can be pretty noisy in some houses. How is at your place? "quiet computer" for myself, here, would mean a computer where you need to put your ear an inch away from it to hear anything - and do this in really quiet place too. I'd say the term is quite relative... No wonder that it's misunderstood in manufacturing and marketing components and computers. And usually it's misunderstood so that's it's pretty quiet in the shop and pretty loud when you bring it home. "Silent" is a bit more common to undestand, everyone knows that it's not making audible sound. But when talking about computers, it is, at least some coil whine. When there's move, there's sound... So that's pretty relative too.
And I will not use term "absolutely silent" at all, there's no such thing with temperatures above 0K.

That's why we need standards... like ECMA-74 (109 page pdf-link just for an example) , three more of those and few ISO standards based on those... Too much? You might say so when even one big manufacturer have mixed one standard about measuring sound level to one about declaring it. Sound and noise are another pair of terms, maybe i'll get to that some day too...

But enough of technical bullshit, time to start to do something. I have heard so many noisy computers that I want to do something about it - and my way is to start this blog and from here i'll try to help all the people who have too loud computers in their home. I have some knowledge to share about choosing component, ventilation of the case, thermal loads, acoustics etc... - and as a teacher I must share it??? I will also write to you about my own projects, every now and then I start with a passive cooled gpu or cpu and start to gather components around it. I'm just starting with a new build of fanless HTPC (Home theater computer) and i'll keep my readers updated about it. All quiestions, comments and suggestions are welcome, so far I really don't know if anyone will ever even read this.

Yours

Silenssimo

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