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[CountryBumkin]

My MSI GT640 is going bad. What do you recommend I replace it with?

This is for an HTPC used for watching Movies (DVD and BD) (with madVR). I'm not too concerned with power economy but I would like to go fanless. I have fans on the case now so there is air flow and it goes in a large Grandia series Silverstone case. I mostly want to keep things as quite as possible. The current card has gotten very loud and distracting.

I've read that a DDR5 equipped video card is ideal. Looking on Newegg for "fanless" really limits my choices. I see an "R7 250" fanless card for around $100. Maybe my fanless desire will need to be reconsidered.

What would you recommend?

[mojave]

Both the  MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G and the ASUS STRIX GTX 970 are completely silent (no fans) until the temperature gets to 55C+. I think the temp limit might be higher on the STRIX. I have the MSI and run the fans at about 20% all the time and still can't hear it. I have the Silverstone Grandia GD07 and I don't think these cards will fit without some case modification. You can see some pictures in my Haswell build thread.

You might also consider the ASUS STRIX GTX 750 Ti.

[Hendrik]

The GTX 960 should be released tomorrow if the rumors hold, and it might have similar hybrid-cooling designs as the 970/980.
For completely passive, the GTX 750 may have a few choices, and for video applications quite powerful too. Although good coolers are virtually silent.

[CountryBumkin]

Thanks. I'm going to see if I can order one tonight.

[mwillems]

I have an Asus Strix 970 and it is completely silent in almost all daily use circumstances.  In most cases when its fan even spins up my cpu fans are already much louder, etc.  It's easily the quietest "fast" video card I've ever owned.

[mojave]

Newegg has the just released ASUS STRIX GTX 960 at $209.99 and the MSI GTX 960 Gaming 2G at $239.99.  Guru3D has reviews of both cards including thermal images.

[Hendrik]

I ordered a MSI GTX 960 Gaming 2G for development purposes (better hardware HEVC/H.265 decoding ahoy), but it'll go into my HTPC once I'm done with the dev work. With HDMI 2.0 and the extra power, it should make my HTPC 4K ready, for whenever I buy a screen.
It should get here tomorrow if someone is interested in some tests.

[mojave]

Let us know if it is the first GPU with full HVEC decoding support. 

[Hendrik]

I can already tell you that it is. 10-bit too, it looks like. So it should be ready for the upcoming Blu-ray 4K format.

[ldoodle]

When do you stop caring about specs. solely for HTPC use (upto 1080p)?

cores
clock speed
boost speed
memory (amount)
memory bit rate
texture rate
floating-point
pixel rate
ddr3 vs gddr5
etc.

It's an absolute minefield.

Looking at the GTX750 (£90) or GTX750 Ti (£110). Is any of the above crippled by the PCI-E slot on the motherboard, i.e. the GTX750 is PCI-E 3.0 but my motherboard is 2.0 or 2.1 (can't remember).

Or, the GT 730 OC (£45).

[6233638]

You definitely want a card with GDDR5.
 
If a 750Ti at £110 is on the table, I'd consider stretching to £160 for a 960 if it has full 10-bit H.265 hardware-accelerated decoding on-board.
I was disappointed to find that my 970 wouldn't even properly decode 4K H.264 videos.
 
It really depends on what level of hardware acceleration you want, and the quality of scaling you want to use.
I have a DDR3-equipped GT610 here as a backup card (the cheapest card I could get locally which had an HDMI output) and even it will work with madVR just fine as long as you use very reduced settings.

[ldoodle]

Low Profile for me only, unfortunately.

750Ti for under £100: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-058-KF&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=1854

[ldoodle]

I went for a GDDR5 GT 730 OC from MSI at £50 as a stop gap until HTPC-designed HDMI 2.0 cards come out.  It can run Lanzos and Jinc without having any 'trade performance for quality' options selected so I'm happy as it's better than my 6450!

One thing with it though, the fan is a bit noisy. It seems to hover around 38% on auto mode.  If I use MSI Afterburner to set it to manual and 30% (which is the minimum it will let me), it's fine.  But if I reboot, it's back to auto mode.  Watching Toy Story 3 on DVD now and I can hear the fan over the sound.

How do I make this change permanent?

Thanks