MSI 7900GT passive cooled?

I don't think any large graphics card manufacturer would ship their products with substandard cooling...they'd be bashed on forums like these and nobody would buy their cards. However, as with most passively cooled chips, you want to have some airflow over the heatsink; it can be a little ammount, but trust me you want it. Play games on the card for a while, then feel the heatsink. Use your judgement...if it's way too hot to touch, you might want to look into aftermarket cooling, or (my favorite), take a 12v case fan, run it on 5v provided by a drive power connector, and direct it at the passive heatsink. That'd be pretty darn silent, especially with the cover of the case on.

That card more than likely depends on airflow from the CPU HSF in order to keep cool.

I'd just get any 7900GT and combine it with a Zalman Reserator 1-plus which will cool both the CPU and GPU completely silently.

Of course your motherboard will then likely need some small fans  

I think Gigabyte sells their 7900GTs with a quiet Zalman cooler on them. Might want to check it out: Gigabyte GeForce 7900GT

Uses a molex connector over PCI-e power connector for some reason...

~Ibrahim~

nice that gigabyte, can someone tellme if he has used that and is a silent cooler?

From some user reviews on it, it is a lot quieter. 18.5-28.5db, which is pretty darn quiet. A great cooler as well, some people have got preliminary OC's of 550/1850 with it. Not a great core clock, but is preliminary. But that mem. clock is mind-blowing! That particular user used some OCZ mem. heatsinks, though.

~Ibrahim~

With a volt mod I'd imagine; I don't believe it's possible to get the memory that high without one.

I believe eVGA sells theirs with the volt-mod already done? Not confirmed, but I've heard it here and there.

True, not likely with it not done, should've mentioned it.

~Ibrahim~