New PC: Video cards swapping

ATI HD5670, which came with my new PC, is not very powerful video card. It's better than some totally budget ones, but it's definitely at the low end. So I decided to compare it with the nVidia 9800GT, which I had in my old PC, and probably swap them. Several years ago 8800GT (which 9800GT is based on, it's basically the same) was almost on the top of the line, and according to the tests I found on Internet, it's still a bit faster than the HD5670.

But first I wanted to replace the cooler on that 9800GT, because the original one was too loud and the card was getting pretty hot on load. Checked what NCIX had on sale, and bought this one - Accelero S1 Rev.2 passive VGA cooler:


The drop in the temperature was huge. With the old cooler the GPU/Ambient temperatures were ~70°C/47°C on idle, and ~80°C/56°C on load. With the Accelero S1 they dropped down to 45°C/34°C and 68°C/43°C accordingly. And that's without fans, in complete silence! Heat pipes are very efficient!

So, I tried both cards in two computers, ran 3DMark06 on both, and here's the result:

3DMark Score	NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT, 512MB	ATI Radeon HD 5670, 1GB
Old computer (Intel Core 2 Duo Processor E7300 2.66 GHz)	11101	9987
New computer (Dell XPS 9100, Intel Core i7-930 Processor 2.8 GHz)	12984	11452

Based on these results, I'm leaving the 9800GT in the new machine, and will see how it will work.