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Fastest 'half height' GPU

Soldato
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I'd love to play some of my older games on my HTPC but the on-board just does not cut it.

So I'm in the market for a half height GPU with HDMI<--(this is a must)..

Anything to recommend?
 
Soldato
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if you mean a single slot card, then i suppose this is a possibility. A bit pricey though..

You might be better off with a 4850, this looks like a single slot design, but i can't remember how the OCUK value products work exactly

You might be best off contacting Overclockers and seeing what low-profile cards they have available.

Oh and don't worry about HDMI if you're going with ATi, a card with DVI ports should come with a DVI->HDMI dongle, which will also happily carry sound :)
 
Soldato
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Asus do a low profile GT220, which I guess is better than the 5450 (which isn't great). Link

Just checked this review, which certainly shows the GT220 as far superior to the 5450 - which appears to be not much better than onboard...
 
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Caporegime
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Think someone just said something about 5750 or 5770 I think on a low profile card at computex, which probably means its not due for a bit, but will almost certainly be far and away the best thing you can get.

http://www.*****.net/content/item.php?item=24924

link is a banned word, a uk hardware website , only placed I've seen it listed, powercolor 5770, tis quite long with a dual slot cooler by the looks of things.
 
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Caporegime
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Yes, half height cards almost all come with a full height and half height bracket and as you can see on there, a ribbon cable attachment to enable a 3rd output when used in a full height computer.

I've got several low end AMD cards for basic computers in the past, some have been half height just because they were, they always came with both expansion slot brackets so you can choose which you want to use.

The 5570 is a bit of a pants gaming card, it might be worth shooting off an e-mail to powercolor to ask when their 5770 is available, its got twice the cores, hugely faster memory and bandwidth to go with it, significantly higher clock speed, frankly it will wipe the flow with teh 5570 and probably be, well, 3 times as fast maybe?

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2935/10

Ok thats about the best case scenario when its crazy faster than a 5570, in other games its at least twice as fast. It will probably cost about twice as much but in some situations that will be a lot more than twice the performance, also mentions in the review that due to lack of cores/clock speed its actually lacking a little in media playback qualitys aswell as being much slower for gaming so overall the 5770 would be a brilliant gaming/htpc card.

Maybe ask in the OCUK product suggestion thing or post a thread, one of the guys who do buying at OCUK might be able to find out when they can get some in stock, if not long its well worth waiting.

Obviously you mentioned more older games, but the 5770 is better at everything, not just gaming.
 
Associate
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sparkle do a half height 9800gt. not sure who sells them though :)

however, with a heatsink like that (and i believe no extrenal power), i would imagine its downclocked quit a bit.

34a.jpg
 
Soldato
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Yeah, I mean if you can find a low-profile 5770, 9800 GT or something, by all means go for it. It's just that cards like those have been notoriously hard to find in the past, so I suggested a safe option.
 
Caporegime
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Yeah, I mean if you can find a low-profile 5770, 9800 GT or something, by all means go for it. It's just that cards like those have been notoriously hard to find in the past, so I suggested a safe option.

Yeah, its only just, like a day ago, appeared at computex 2010, really hard to judge though, it could be out tomorrow with stock shipping out to stores now, or it could be released in 10 months, niche products like low profile higher powered things often come out way down the line.

It looks like a pretty decent card, actually good sink and is overclocked even, though, that could increase prices obviously.
 
Associate
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As you are using this in a HTPC, it may be worth noting that the ATI 5 series bitstream dolby true and DTS master HD audio. If you have or get hold of an amp that supports this it may be a deciding factor.
 
Soldato
OP
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Nottinghamshire
I'm not looking for anything to play Crysis tbh, Ive got my main machine for that.

I'm wanting this for mostly old Tony Hawks games and older racing games, basically anything I'm going to play with a pad..

That 9600GT looks promising I'll check it out.
 
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