Upgrading GFX

[Cantii]

When going for a quiet video card, you want to be mindful of the type of cooler it has. Your EVGA GTX 470 has a blower-type fan, these are anything but quiet and spin at upwards of 2500 RPM at full bore, and get very, very loud. You'll want something that has a more conventional fan, or a dual-fan design.

HD 6950 - (not flashable) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-523-_-Product, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-921-_-Product, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-562-_-Product - Pretty much any 6950 with any decent fan (i.e. not reference blower) cannot be flashed. Only reference cards can be flashed.

GTX 560 Ti - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-424-_-Product, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-565-_-Product, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-101-_-Product

GTX 570 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-075-_-Product, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-613-_-Product, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-096-_-Product

Non-reference 6970s are hard to come by, as the only decent one is the ASUS EAH6970 DirectCU (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-430-_-Product)

All of these will be significantly quieter than the reference blower design as well as cool more efficiently. They are all valid replacements for the GTX 470. I, myself, would go with either the HD6950 or GTX 560 Ti.

[Deleted]

I cant recommend the 6990/590 'cos they are far too expensive for what they are doing. I mean microlags, far too hot, really loud, extremely power intensive. If you really need that GFX power i would recommend a SLI or Crossfire sytem around 560/570 or for better multi-monitoring a 6950/6970 system. But if you don't need it just take a single card/GPU! You are talking about multi-monitoring for that i would always choose a ATI card 'cos they are far better in that than Nvidia.

There is a second problem that high end GPU's often need a high end PC (CPU, motherboard, RAM, hard drives and so on). I mean surely you can have that on low/ middle end PC's but they won't have there real power.

[Kraszmyl]

This is wrong, because I´m running 3 screens on my 470 atm Well, the performance of a 590/6990 will make up for the noise for me The 6970 or 50 will be the most likely choice though

Yep i stand corrected. I was apprently misreading the specs. Apprently the 4xx and 5xx series can support up to 3 displays currently at discression of the vendor who makes the card. I was thinking of Surround which has a requirement of atleast two cards in sli to get the three 3d displays up and running.