prolly put the wierd cooling on the FX cause that 4200 OTES card was getting a LOT of attention, and it used pretty much that cooling system. they just added an intake to it so it brings in outside air.

-scheherazade

I'm just wondering how NVIDIA of all companies came up with that bizzare, inefficient and overly cumbersome system to begin with.

"Life is not about the second chances. It's about the little mouse, and his voyage to an exciting new land. That, my friend, is what life is." - Dad

*shrug* So buy a Gainward GF FX. They have theirs down to 7 db. A bit quieter than a human heartbeat and a damn sight quieter than your hardrive's cooling fan. Some halfwit mentioned it was a company sales bit -- and it was. But it's an easily varifiable bit and they're not going to shoot themselves in the foot screwing it up. Gainward has their FX Ultra down to one slot I believe too, the result of their alternative cooling solution. I'd bet it'll cost more, but you get what you pay for.

nvidia sucks and always has, its just kinda weird that ATI is kicking their ass now instead of 3dfx. just dont buy a geforce and your life will be better

Not everyone is happy to have a computer making that much noise though.

I listen to all my music on my PC (I ripped all my CDs to MP3s a while back) and I'd go nuts if I had all that noise going on when I was trying to listen. Games too... it's quite nice if you can hear the subtle sounds as well as the loud ones.

Noise = bad.

Wow, that is a huge disappointment, I truly hope this isn’t the final word on performance. I don’t seem to understand the big deal about noise, I grew up around muscle cars and motorcycles, and so everything had to be as fast and as loud as possible. I may have only gained 4 extra ponies on my R1 but damn it sounds nicer (and louder) with performance exhaust. Since I never seem to have any of those troublesome annoyances such as a social life and girlfriends, I have way too much time and money to waste on my computer and bike. I have so many fans in my case it sounds like when you dump your tranny into first gear from 70 mph. Which, btw, the fans don’t seem to be working well enough can anyone recommend a good liquid cooling system(s)? I really don’t want to fry my chip, unless they actually catch fire and blow up then that would almost be worth it to watch.

I don't want to just be good for a thought, I want to be worth a new T.V. or a new car.
--Zephersnazzen

I saw some DirectX9 benchies and FX sucked there to lmao, this is such a flop for Nvidia. I was hoping to keep buying Nv stuff, but it's just rediculouse now with that dustbuster on and still cant keep up with 6 month old Radeon9700...and more then 200Euro extra lmao ...WHAT A PEACE OF CRAPOLA

HEY, CHECK OUT MY COOL GEFARCE FX'S GRAPHIX!

WHAT, I CANT HEAR YOU!

I SAID CHECK OUT MY GEFARCE FX!

I CAN'T HEAR OVER THAT LOUD NOISE!

HOLD ON, LET ME SHUT DOWN MY COMPUTER AND PUT IN MY OLD 9700 PRO!

a few minutes later...

Hey Dude, your computer has cool graphics. Is it powered by that new Geforce FX you've been bragging about?

Errr, yeahhh... Thats the ticket. Its powered by my new 'Gefarce' :'-( Wait here dude, I gotta take something back to Best Buy.

This comment was edited on Jan 31, 14:50.

ya, i always buy cards the day they are in stock. that way i never feel like i could have waited or could have paid a little more and gotten a lot faster card. its most expensive that way, but also most satisfying for the longest period of time. takes some while before feeling screwed

-scheherazade

GeForce FX looks like it's going the way of the 3dfx Voodoo5 6000.

Voodoo5 6000 ... big ... bloated ... expensive ... last ditch effort to get ahead of Nvidia

GeForce FX ... big ... loud ... hot ... expensive ... last ditch effort to get ahead of ATI


- Dr. Del
This comment was edited on Jan 31, 11:52.

Well it seems that NVIDIA has botched the first impression, which in most cases is the lasting impression. I'm sure the drivers will be tweaked to hell and thus the performance gap between the 9700 and the FX will grow, but probably not much more. My intentions were to wait for the FX to come out in hopes that it might cause the 9700 to drop in price, so I could snag one but now I'm hearing about this new ATI card... It never ends, I wish I was ignorant to the whole situation so I would have bought the 9700 the day it came out

Is anyone else bothered by the airflow design of the reference cooling system?

While avoiding the warm air inside the case does have it's advantages, it would seem to me that these are nullified by the fact that the inlet and outlet ducts of the cooling system are beside each other.

Thus a good portion of the hot air coming out (whose column expands rapidly as soon as it leaves the ducts) travels a few inches and then just gets sucked right back in, especially in situations where the rear end of the case is only a few inches from a typical obstruction such as a wall. This problem is further excaberated if the case is configured to exhaust air from the back (The GFFX could be breathing the hair-dryer-hot air right out of your power supply.)

Yeah, and 70 decibels??? Jesusf**kingchrist! That's louder than the top of the line Delta 60mm fan.


"Life is not about the second chances. It's about the little mouse, and his voyage to an exciting new land. That, my friend, is what life is." - Dad
This comment was edited on Jan 30, 23:13.

Sorry, my mistake

That is actually very good news. That would mean it's a LOT quieter than the Radeon 9700 too. You gotta love Taiwan
Btw, Von Helmet, yeah I know about the SG workstations, it's the old joke though "run it on some SG's!"


Creston

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=7516

"Gainward engineers in Taiwan, before they get their deserved week of vacation for Chinese New year, have been busy to making a low noise cooling solution. They were able to reduce the cooling system noise to only 7dbs. They claim the rest of the Nvidia reference design cards could be as high as 70db that is "the same level as a domestic vacuum cleaner". We don’t need to say more."

So, if you want to upgrade to something spanky, I'd get a Radeon 9700. 1600x1200x32 at 100+fps is sweeeeeeeet

Thanks! Looks like I'm gonna have some fun this weekend!


Edit: Did the quote thing wrong....
This comment was edited on Jan 30, 09:09.

SG workstations would actually run Doom3 like a big pile of ass. Graphics workstations like that are very good at rendering single frames extremely accurately i.e. no clipping, tearing, etc, but they suck at rendering a whole bunch of frames in a hurry.

But I'm being pedantic. Apologies

To be fair, I'm fairly certain my Geforce 4 Ti 4200 will run Doom 3 fairly happily. Not at full detail or resolution or anything, but well enough.

With the exception of Doom 3, I don't think there is ANYTHING going to come out that won't run like a mad train (ie, very good) on a Radeon 9700 or a Geforce 4 Ti4600.

Even Doom 3 will run fine on those (providing you have enough processor power), but you won't get to see all of Carmack's Shiny New Toys. Then again, unless you have a cluster of SG workstations, I doubt ANYTHING is going to run Doom 3 with all the bells and whistles on at more than 5fps.
Let's not forget that Carmack said that he expected the Doom 3 engine to last for five years.

So, if you want to upgrade to something spanky, I'd get a Radeon 9700. 1600x1200x32 at 100+fps is sweeeeeeeet

Creston

I'm still running on a GF2 Ultra. Should I wait a while to upgrade my video card still? Or is there a card on the market that I will be able to play today and tomorrow's games on well?

Thanks!

hmm, that sounds funny.

freudian slip. thinking of which card would 'win' made me write the wrong number down.
make the 5800 -> 9700, then win would work. just got mixxed up typing too fast.

o well

my settings were:
1600x1200x32
anisotropic 16x
no AA
32 bit z
0 TC on diffuse texture
0 TC on bump map texture
0 TC on specular texture

and all the misc options i could fund turned up.

i also tried it at 2048x1536x32, but i couldnt be sure that was it cause above 1600x1200 you cant recognize the rez by looking at it anymore cause there is no easilly visible aliasing, and the 'r_mode' command isnt documented.

also this is why i dont use AA. turning up the rez eliminates aliasing, and (for current games) runs faster, and no fuzz.

o yea, exec'ing the 'high quality' cfg doesnt make the quality max. you can set the settings even higher, and there are other settings to turn up.

-scheherazade

This comment was edited on Jan 29, 00:09.