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New video card
Biggles
<font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
in Zocalo v2.0
Last night my video card started drawing the screen like a very messed up sliding puzzle. Since I'm not really a fan of solving 30 or more sliding puzzles a second to see what I'm doing on my computer, I need a new video card.
My now-deceased card was an Geforce 8800GT, and it was awesome. I'm looking for the equivalent in the current offerings: mid-range, decent amount of power, but also quiet and (if possible) low power draw. I prefer nvidia, because their Linux support is much better, and I am aware that nvidia's current offerings don't really fit well in the "low power draw" category. I'm not interested in "budget" cards, nor am I interested in the most powerful card on the planet or SLI/Crossfire.
I currently have a fall-back card (an 8600GT, I think) that I'm using, so I don't have to buy a card right now. I can wait a little while if it means getting a better card. It will delay Mass Effect 2, though...
My now-deceased card was an Geforce 8800GT, and it was awesome. I'm looking for the equivalent in the current offerings: mid-range, decent amount of power, but also quiet and (if possible) low power draw. I prefer nvidia, because their Linux support is much better, and I am aware that nvidia's current offerings don't really fit well in the "low power draw" category. I'm not interested in "budget" cards, nor am I interested in the most powerful card on the planet or SLI/Crossfire.
I currently have a fall-back card (an 8600GT, I think) that I'm using, so I don't have to buy a card right now. I can wait a little while if it means getting a better card. It will delay Mass Effect 2, though...
Comments
But for a new card I'd say go with the Nvidia GTX460 for around 200€. There is a 768mb and a 1gb version and there are some other small differences between them. so if I were you I'd read up on some reviews and see if you want to spend 30-50€ more for the 1gb version to get a bit of fps boost.
Atm the GTX460 is in my opinion the best performance vs price that nvidia got to offer and ATI hasn't brought down the price of the hd5850 yet to compete.
And from Nvidia the 460, 465 and 470.
The sweet spot or closest you will find it in this generation is going to be for your purposes the 460, but warning its still a bit of a power hog, (then again so is the 5830) and is slightly faster and I think slightly cheaper then ATI's 5830. If your willing to spend more then that the 465 would be a good choice except the 5850 can be had for a little bit more, and is a better card, with lower power consumption.
If you can hang on till winter, ATI is releasing "Southern Islands" which is a revamp of their current line with different uncore parts to increase performance.. but their linux support will probably continue to suck.
As for Nvidia we probably won't see new cards from them till early next year. The Fermi turned out to be a bit of a disaster from a manufacturing standpoint (yields are rumored to be atrocious) And its going to take a drastic overhaul in order to get something working right, which even though they started that back in January, February time frame.. these things take time.
Frankly both Nvidia and ATI got screwed around by TSMC's inability to do its new processes right. First 40mm bulk got screwed up, and took forever to square away, and right now further process shrinks by TSMC are not looking too rosy, the GPU market is in a big state of turmoil..
The 460 does look to be the sweet spot, but as the only one that doesn't use a stock leaf-blower was released one week ago... it may be worth holding off a little for a few more versions to appear.
All in all the GF100 and its derivatives are just not that great of chips in many ways.
10W at load isn't that much. If it were idle, a point my video card spends most of its time during normal desktop use, I'd be concerned. As it is, the 460 equals or slightly beats the 5850 for power use at idle. Considering the superior Linux support with nvidia cards, that swings things slightly in the 460's favour.
[quote]All in all the GF100 and its derivatives are just not that great of chips in many ways.[/QUOTE]
They're not stellar, like my pal the 8800GT, but they're not [i]bad[/i] (well, OK, the GF100 is bad with those sorts of power draws, but the GF104 isn't). And it's not like I have much choice. If my card hadn't died, I'd be waiting quite a while before upgrading. Then either nvidia would churn out a better chip than the GF104, or ATI would fix its Linux support by the time I upgrade.
[QUOTE=C_Mon;189379]Another question is, is the stock cooler not good enough?[/QUOTE]
No. It's too loud. If I could, I'd get a fanless card.
As for the GF104 at idle, it burns 1 less watt then the 5850... which still is a faster card :P, but it would be an awesome buy if the prices would come down, or in your case ATI finally stepped up with decent linux drivers, or both would be nice actually.
Anyways come November time, as I said, the "second generation of DX11" cards will be out from ATI. (pokes rcmodels, see the southern islands reference in my first post :P ? and its not a totally new chip, it takes the existing core and merges the future Northern Islands uncore to it. And its most likely retail availability will probably mirror their previous release, late November, early December. :P ) I'm in a similar bind, cause I was looking to upgrade about august/September time, but now its looking like I'm going to have to wait an extra couple months to see what the new cards can do.
We really should be having better cards at this point.. Northern Islands should have been out either now, or this fall, and Fermi shouldn't have sucked as much as it does.. but a lot of the blame for the current state of affairs lies right at the feet of TSMC and their inability to successfully pull off die shrinks effectively for their bulk process (for those not in the know TSMC is the fab that actually makes the chips for both Nvidia and ATI, since ATI has yet to move production over to Global Foundries.)
I was actually considering doing the same thing back when I got my 8800GT, but the Asus card I got had an aftermarket cooler on it already that was quiet enough for me not to bother. I would not be opposed to doing so this time around, though. It's a valid solution that can often lead to a fanless card given my P182 case's awesome airflow.
[QUOTE=Tyvar;189392]As for the GF104 at idle, it burns 1 less watt then the 5850... which still is a faster card :P, but it would be an awesome buy if the prices would come down, or in your case ATI finally stepped up with decent linux drivers, or both would be nice actually.[/QUOTE]
That's the thing... I'm not enough of a gamer for the performance difference to be worth the price difference anymore (although I think AMD will drop the price within a few months). But, more than that, my main OS is Linux. ATI drivers are simply not up to the job without a huge risk of bugs. It sucks, because it cuts my realistic choices in half.
Worf
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[url]http://linux.slashdot.org/story/10/02/01/1938258/AMD-Publishes-Open-Source-ATI-Evergreen-Driver[/url]
Something a bit more recent...
As for where I heard it, it was from a forum post. Yeah I know, take forum posts for a grain of salt, but it came from a friend that I trust.
I read that the earliest we can expect to see PCIe 3.0 supporting motherboards is Q3 2011.
"Now that the backward compatibility issues are resolved, the PCI-SIG says it is on track for the base release of the 0.9 revision “later this summer.” This is expected to be followed by the base release of revision 1.0 in the fourth quarter of this year."
Boutiqe System builders we have them by end of this year i don't doubt it.
[IMG]http://media.bestofmicro.com/M/U/256134/original/Timeline.jpg[/IMG]
damm it more delays!!!!!!
[url]http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pci-express-3.0-pci-sig,2695.html[/url]
I know the article says 3rd quarter, but that's people from PCI-SIG being optimistic again, and I think the current track record argues against putting too much credit into their optimism.
"Neshati added that there would be “no silicon-impacting changes” (the only changes would be software/firmware-related) between revision 0.9 and revision 1.0, which is what will allow some products to start to trickle into the marketplace before the final release of the 1.0 revision. During this time, products will be able to qualify for the PCI-SIG “Integrator’s List” (the “IL” triangle), which is PCI-SIG’s version of an approval logo."
the circuits are done, only thing is firmware finalization. Technically you could put them on board now and leave it dormant until firmware finalization.
"Neshati added that there would be “no silicon-impacting changes” (the only changes would be software/firmware-related) between revision 0.9 and revision 1.0, which is what will allow some products to start to trickle into the marketplace before the final release of the 1.0 revision. During this time, products will be able to qualify for the PCI-SIG “Integrator’s List” (the “IL” triangle), which is PCI-SIG’s version of an approval logo."
the circuits are done, only thing is firmware finalization. Technically you could put them on board now and leave it dormant until firmware finalization.[/QUOTE]
Except the review for .9 doesn't close until august 30th? that's the point you can consider .9 finalized. And then motherboard manufacturers are going to have to design new boards supporting PCIe 3.0, and figure out how its going to work in regards to chipset support? I suspect that's going to take longer then you think. And then they are going to have to do a lot of testing, packaging, shipping all of this stuff takes time.