My family gave me a great birthday present ...Aperture. I have a 2 year old dual G5 2.0, plenty of RAM at 2.5 Gig, but the older 9800 Pro ATI video card with only 64 Meg of Video Ram. I decided to upgrade the video card since Aperture is very card intensive. The G5 is extremely quiet and I very rarely hear fan noise and the box sits right next to me. I like that.
The first card I tried was the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro Mac addition. This card requires a separate power hookup for the fan (note the card I have does not have a fan). When I installed the card, my G5 was no longer quiet and the fan noise was very annoying after a short time. I sent it back and got the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro Special Addition. This card has a fan but no power hookup requirement. This was worse the the previous card as the fan noise had a high pitched whine to it as well as the whirr. I sent it back and put the old card back in.
There is one more card avaialbe in the ATI Radeon X800XT with a fan but no additonal power requirements. I am hesitant to try this. Does anyone have experience with this card and its contribution to noise? In all the reviews I have read on these cards, no reviewer mentions fan noise. With a machine like the G5 this makes a huge difference.
Thanks for any help, advice, or ideas on this.