Sorry guys, I know this was a length question. I reallu need to figure out what to do though. My benchmark scores are all stable across the board, except my graphics are so erratic in range that I've ran multiple tests that rated my 2D score above 600, but dropped my 3D score to as low as 140 from the high of 313. I've tried everything in CCC to improve the issue with mixed luck. Is there a better program to control the settings with?

Also, the card could be running hot- is having the case fan installed as an intake with the PCI exhaust a good idea, or should both be pushing air out? RIght now the air temps inside the case run 4c-6c above ambient room temperature. Right now for example, it's 23c at my desk, and 28c inside my tower. The CPU's are at  23c core temp and GPU at 46c core.

No problem pushing air in the front and pulling out the back.

1GB GDDR5 version of Radeon 6670 would be better than GDDR3 4670.

ASUS EAH6670DIS1GD5

AMD Radeon HD 6670 1024MB GDDR5

ASUS EAH6670DIS1GD5 AMD Radeon HD 6670 1024MB GDDR5 PCIe 2.1 x16 Video Card

ATI Radeon™ HD 4600 Series GPU Specifications 

• 514 million transistors on 55nm fabrication process
• PCI Express 2.0 x16 bus interface
• GDDR3/DDR3/DDR2 memory interface (depending on model)
• Microsoft® DirectX® 10.1 support
  • Shader Model 4.1
  • 32-bit floating point texture filtering
  • Indexed cube map arrays
  • Independent blend modes per render target
  • Pixel coverage sample masking
  • Read/write multi-sample surfaces with shaders
  • Gather4 texture fetching
• Unified Superscalar Shader Architecture
  • 320 stream processing units

AMD Radeon™ HD 6670 GPU Feature Summary

• 800 MHz engine clock
• 512MB-1GB GDDR5 memory
• 1000 MHz memory clock (4.0 Gbps GDDR5)
• 64 GB/s memory bandwidth
• 768 GFLOPS Single Precision compute power
• TeraScale 2 Unified Processing Architecture
  • 480 Stream Processing Units
  • 24 Texture Units
  • 32 Z/Stencil ROP Units
  • 8 Color ROP Units
• 128-bit GDDR5 memory interface
• PCI Express 2.1 x16 bus interface
• DirectX® 11 support
  • Shader Model 5.0
  • DirectCompute 11
  • Programmable hardware tessellation unit
  • Accelerated multi-threading
  • HDR texture compression
  • Order-independent transparency
• OpenGL 4.1 support

Thanks for the suggestion- the specs on that thing look awesome and the price is right there too. It makes the spec sheet on my current HD4670 look like they are for a netbook. I only wonder if the X3 processor and factory speed hard disk will let me pull the full benefit from the HD6670 card? If it wasn't for the unreliable card in place now, I'd be tempted to wait a week or so until I have my OS and primary programs running via SSD. But, I can't get over my OCD with having a clunking desktop sit here while I use my laptop to work at a snail's pace for the meanwhile.

Oh yes, about the fans- the intake is mounted in back, where it replaced the factory fan. I haven't found a good place to mount an internal intake that isn't designated for a fan already. So, I have lots of venting around the case, air pulled in up top toward the heatsink, and pushed out via the PCI exhaust. I know it's upside-down on the thermal dynamics, but I am working with what I could find readily available and confirmed to fit/function with the computer....

I am back from work and will spend some time here, investigating your problems, next post will follow.

First, in relation to Video Card, no offense, SpeedStep recommended Asus 6670, it is a good card for the ORIGINAL DELL PSU OF ONLY 300 watt, you have already 500 watt, do you want to waste your PSU upgrade? First you have to decide how much money you want to spend and which duties your card must perform, is it for general things, like HD movies, Photoshop and alike, or you planning to play games like Crysis and Battlefield 3? Which performance is the most important to you image rendering 2D or 3D, etc.

When choosing Video card, you have to consider MSI suggestions (which are applicable generally for all manufacturers) "minimum power requirements using a PSU with a single +12V rail" so you get what your PSU can handle. Also, as you noticed, heat is the ISSUE in Inspiron 570. I am still struggling with it despite this monster cooling you see below

It is got better, but I am not completely satisfied.

Back to you. You have to take a look at Video Card temperatures comparison, it is useful, that is why I have MSI 550 TI Cyclone OC, there is also MSI R6850 Cyclone PE/OC version of this card with identical cooler. Your PSU CoolerMaster Extreme Power Plus 500w PSU has 2 rales with 18 A each, I am not sure what exactly you can do with 2 rales (can you combine them into 1), the best would be posting in MSI forum - they are quick to answer and very helpful, I recommend doing so. But again, placing 6670 probably is waste to your PSU.

Now ventilation. I would ask SpeedStep, did you place intake fan in the front? I tried, and will keep trying. The problem - 80mm fan cannot fit (to the inside of the front panel), I have 70mm from old parts with which I am playing now, will see, it probably will require to drill Dell case for fan screws. Is there is the way to place 120mm fan and bolt it to the case somehow?

My numbers for comparison. I just now run a few tests. Using Passmark Performance Test: idle outside 19 C (it is cold here unusually) GPU 26C, 2D 351.8 at 29C, 3D 1940.9 at 45C, CPU 4467.6 at 41C. I also run AIDA64 full registered version, however there is evaluation version as well, but I don't know if it will run GPU stress test. So, AIDA64 GPU stress test for 25 minutes - GPU T reached 55C with fan speed 61% and 2700 RPM, when I played Crysis 2 for 2 hours non stop my GPU T was at 56 C, not higher. After all stress tests GPU idle T is 40C.

Little question to you. What Remote Thermometer you used? I cannot find one?

Also, if you decide to ask more questions regarding Video Card or cooling, please use the same post - it is difficult to find at times, Dell forum search doesn't show fresh posts, only starting with about 1 week old, and scrolling through the posts is boring.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/593/xfxvsstockgraphics.jpg/I appreciate the detailed response and photo of your cooling rig- I'll get to a full response to that soon. Right now though I just had to post this because it really has me baffled. I shut down the computer and turned it back on after a few hours of use- the screen wouldn't display a thing. I plugged the VGA cable back into the original port and got a picture just fine. I think that somehow the XFX card overheated and burned out, or was just defective.

Then the good part. I reran the performance test with the integrated graphics instead of the XFX Radeon. The results below show that 2D graphics were virtually identical; only the 3D area suffered (and by a lot, but that's beside the point).

Whoops- forgot the screen shot.

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

OK, I placed 2 70mm intake fans from inside, see below:

Front view -look at bolts, upper right mesh and lower left mesh

Inside view - AVC fan is lower one

And all this for nothing, I run IntelBurn maximum stress test (as before) and I did not see any improvement, the only thing I noticed that temperatures were dropping faster after test was stopped. GPU testing shown improvement by 1 degree, what a joke! Thanks God I did not purchased any of those fans - all come from old parts bin...

Have troubles inserting images grrr

KISIANIK

I suggest reading before flaming.  I know there are better cards.  :emotion-12:

OP said "I've since realized I have the budget to buy a better card and return this one- any card under $100"

Recommendation was based on those parameters.

@SpeedStep: I guess I did not said correct this phrase "no offense, SpeedStep recommended Asus 6670, it is a good card for the ORIGINAL DELL PSU OF ONLY 300 watt" - OP mentioned that he has 500 watt PSU, which can handle more than 6670, that is why I used "no offense" phrase. I did not mean to offend you SpeedStep, not at all, my apologies.:emotion-6:

Now coming back to first phrase in you post SpeedStep - "No problem pushing air in the front and pulling out the back." What you meant by this. It is very easy to see the intake fans and exhaust fans solution, I was planning to do this from a few weeks ago, just happened that I had time and courage today, so I did it and got frustrated with results.

Dell Inspiron 570 is very restricted budget model, BIOS is not tweakable, FANS cannot be controlled by software, no place to attach good intake fan (also the front mesh panel is uneven surface, which creates additional problems with fan's bolting), so all of us here are trying to find best solution in current situation. I had to try 70mm fans since they are the largest ones, which can be fitted there relatively easy, and I did not expected any miracle, but was hoping it would make some noticeable difference.... peace.

I really wouldn't deemphesize the importance and effect fans can play. An upgraded case fan and PCI exhaust gave me at least 10c cooler ambient air temps inside the case. I literally have one of those wireless indoor/outdoor temperature units with the transmitter for "outdoors" glued with silicone to the side pannel that slides off. When I had nothing but Dell's cooling, I was +12F to +20F above the temperature of the air on the exterior of the case, where the display unit magnetically mounts. I have that down to a MAX of +10 degrees fernenheit difference at full load for an hour, with it being +6 most of the time. When you reach the point that you're THAT close to pulling outside air in that is no cooler than the case's inner atmosphere, you're right that fans have reached their limits.

Now, my video card is offically dead. That's just fine since it was going anyway, but I NEED to know that the integrated graphics aren't still taking over for 2D situations first, because the test results imply they were. Unless someone wants to give me a warning to shy away, I'm pretty set on this HD6670 based on price, value and performance. I don't need anything crazy- I don't game= I just do some light video editing and lots of image and publishing functions. I do worry about the double 18A situation with the PSU I added. Did I make a mistake that I should fix there?

I agree that the 570 would be horrible for a serious gamer/overclocker who wanted a serious rig. For someone like me, I can say for <$600 total investment including initial purchase, I have a system that clocks faster than anything my father could buy when attempting to find a new famly room system for their home. It's also a good place for someone to cut their teeth, as they WON'T be tempted to be stupid and go nuts within the BIOS. I already have my parent's two-year old HP that I brought home to use as a real bottom=up build. I mostly am using it because the case is nice and the PSU was replaced with a 600w unit after it failed three months ago. The entire system from motherboard to hard drives to OS are all going to be from scatch. I'll likely go with an AMD X6 and hybrid storage drives on that one= if not a 50/50 split with one 250GB SSD and one 1TB traditional storage drive.

Last thought- my current rear case fan is making my ears bleed. Does this fan seem like it should move a fair amount around or is it going to be too weak for a situation like this one?

Thanks all!

There are 3X fan trays that can be mounted in the front via the 5.25 inch bays.  There are also fans that can vent out empty slots to the back.  

StarTech 5.25" 3-Fan Drive Bay Hard Drive Cooler with Black Bezel SKU: 128249

Evercool Vantec Spectrum UV LED Fan Card with Fan Control SKU: 396382

Antec Cyclone Blower Slot Mounted Cooling Fan
SKU: 311647

Thermaltake PCI Slot Fan Blue LED
SKU: 672790

If cooling is really a problem you can also get a 25 inch BOX FAN and open the cover and blow a hurricane thru the open side of the case.

First about my little request " I literally have one of those wireless indoor/outdoor temperature units with the transmitter for "outdoors"" - can you just give me a name/model approximately of this unit, I have no clue where to start looking - all what I got so far was cooking gadgets, lol.

O.K. No more pushing for stronger/pricier Video card. Asus 6670, as recommended by SpeedStep is a bit superior to the rest of the 6670 cards, first of all due to little factory overclock, second due to better cooling (I don't know what is the reference they used, but the difference is impressive). Before I upgraded to 550 TI, I was considering this Asus as well due to the recommendations for gaming (I heard you, you are not a gamer, however games require more graphic power) and cooling. It is about 20 USD pricier compare to your choice (Amazon), however it is DDR5 vs DDR3 for your choice. The other thing to consider is cooling, you already have most likely fried old card, and you know that Inside inspiron is not Alaska, but could be Death Valley - something to think about.

"I do worry about the double 18A situation with the PSU I added. Did I make a mistake that I should fix there?" If you don't need stronger Video Card, you don't have to care about PSU, unless you can return it and place original back - it will handle Asus 6670 just fine, don't know about HIS 6670. However, PSU overkill is better than keep all components working at their edge.

"Last thought- my current rear case fan is making my ears bleed" This is kinda tricky situation. I reviewed your choice on newegg, all say it is quiet, however a lot say it is not that strong. I wish I could hear Fan decibels prior to buying them - I need stronger fans as well (some are noisy, ugh as well), but I am afraid of getting something very loud. I am not sure if I can advice here. Just numbers. I had exhaust fan (which I placed as pull fan on CPU) which run between 2500-2700 RPM at all times and I was thinking it is not strong enough, so I placed a bit faster one (from old Dell parts) as exhaust, but it will have to be changed due to clicking noise (not that bad yet). Nocturia fan max RPM is about 1600, so go figure out. Nocturia is praising itself as ultra quiet fan, well you need performance as well.......

SpeedStep, your offer is kinda too late, done it already with my OLD XPS Gen 3 circa 2004, still working well. 5.25 bay coolers will blow air directly into PSU, also it is most likely 3x40mm fans, what can they do? Nothing. I am trying to see how get air from the front panel. Do you know about any type of brackets for 120 or 140mm fans to be mounted standing, in the middle of the case? There is an unused place under HDD with bottom and mobo sides available for bolting. This is the only way to move tons of air inside.