Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: Brenjen on June 16, 2006, 12:57:09 PM
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Skuzzy, this question is for you. Is this new graphics card going to work with AHII like a normal SLI set-up or is it going to be a problem like the dual core CPU's?
I have a chance to get one of these new GeForce 7950 GX2 cards on the ultra cheap (under $100) but I don't care to have it if it's going to cause me issues with AH.
Edit: Here's a link to a couple reviews for everyone interested;
Here (http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=7950gx2&page=1&cookie%5Ftest=1)
&
here (http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/353/1/)
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My question is will you need a sli mobo to use this card.
Bronk
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You don't need a SLI mobo for the 7950 GX2, but you may need a bios update. Check the compatibility list before buying.
Brenjen, for $100 just buy it and see :) If you don't like it (and it's not broken/defective), I'll buy it from you for your cost plus shipping.
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Well it's on the list. Ummm bren I'll send ya the $$ if ya don't want it .:D
My little 6600gt cuold use upgradin.
Bronk
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Originally posted by Bronk
Well it's on the list. Ummm bren I'll send ya the $$ if ya don't want it .:D
My little 6600gt cuold use upgradin.
Bronk
I have the 6600go and used coolbits to overclock the poop out of it.... much happier since it had been underclocked.
Coolbits (http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=815)
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ROFLMAO...well folks, I forgot to mention the fact that I'll get it for under a hundred bucks ( $83 & change actually) only by sending in my 7900GTX as a trade in.
If you guys are interested in a 2 month old 7900GTX for $525 I'll be glad to sell you a card:D
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You folks make me SICK! What with your high card numbers, and your DX9 cards! And... and!!!!
damn I'm envious ;)
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Originally posted by x0847Marine
I have the 6600go and used coolbits to overclock the poop out of it.... much happier since it had been underclocked.
Coolbits (http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=815)
The 6600 gt runs hot enough. I think OCing it would be bad unless i invest in better cooling for it.
Bronk
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*bump* sorry but I need to know if AH is going to have problem with this card really soon. I am time restricted with the offer.
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Bren, it's such a new card I don't think anybody has tried it with AH yet.
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You're not going to see much of a speed increase from a 7900GTX... I doubt you'll see any problems but each 7950 gpu is clocked at GT speeds, not GTX speeds, so if the game doesn't work well with SLI then you'll actually see a slowdown.
Dig the 7950 review out of http://www.hardocp.com and http://www.anandtech.com. They have decent explanations of what this card can and cannot do.
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so if the game doesn't work well with SLI then you'll actually see a slowdown.
ROFLMAO...um, I know. That's why I specifically said "Skuzzy, this question is for you."
I don't mind everyone else chiming in, but I only have a set number of days to take advantage of the offer & I need to know if this hardware will perform in AHII or if it is going to have the same problems as the dual core processors ran into.
Did you read the reviews I posted Eagl?
That's what I'm afraid of Krusty..that I'll be the guinea pig. I'm hoping it will be like a normal SLI but being bridged gpu's in one socket it's causing me to wonder.
I'm getting so short on time, I'll probably just go ahead & pay for it & takes me chances.
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Yea I read those reviews pretty much the day they came out. And pretty much all of them show that the card is no faster than a pair of regular 7900GT's in SLI, and in some cases slower than a single 7900GTX.
So "no problem" with AH is not really the question you want answered... Yea it'll probably run but since you're probably the only person who's ever seriously considered getting one and playing AH with it, you're pretty much the crash test dummy on this experiment :eek:
I think the only way to really find out is to either buy a rig for yourself, or buy an SLI rig for HT and bribe him with scotch until he agrees to spend a week writing a few SLI optimizations.
The con would be a good place to make your case, but I wouldn't place any bets on the outcome :)
edit - regarding why you specifically asked skuzzy, if you browse back through this forum you'll find that (at least to the limit of my memory) HTC has almost never intentionally made recommendations about hardware purchases for the game. The closest they have come in the last few years is when the latest graphics engine initially worked a LOT better on nvidia cards than on ATI cards, and skuzzy favors intel cpus in general over AMD cpus. I think the performance on various video cards has evened out a bit but I also recollect that they caught a bit of hate over the simple admission that they hadn't gotten AH to run on ATI cards as well as Nvidia cards.
Couple that with the general grumpiness from when the original CK beta had S3 card specific optimizations, and like I said above you might have to corner HT or pyro with a few liquid bribes to get them to speak off the record on the subject of game rig hardware choices.
Plus they coad on rigs many of us would consider hopelessly antiquated, so it's possible they've never even seen their game run on the latest hardware. Seeing the crickets chirping from the lack of response from skuzzy, some of us have tried to fill in the blanks. Sorry if that upsets you.
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You're killing me over here eagl :D
I already know how it performs VS. the 7900 GTX & I had a twin 7800GT SLI rig already.
What I want to know specifically from the Skuzz man is NOT "what he recommends"
All I want to know is "will this card be issue free with AH programming or is it going to run into the same issues as the dual core CPU's"
That is a tech question about hardware compatability; not his opinion about what I should or should not buy.
If he doesn't know, he can say so. I want to find out before I purchase the card, but for $80 I might get it anyway whether it works with AH or not; try it out & if it sucks I can just sell it & get another 7900GTX.
I'll be the crash test dummy....I like you guys that much :eek:
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If it works with the mobo, should work with AH2.
List of compatible motherboards and BIOS version needed.
http://www.nvidia.com/content/geforce_gx2_sbios/us.asp
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I know it'll work with my MOBO; the last info I read said I will have to flash my bios but the card will work.
People may have thought the same thing about the dual cpu systems too & they had to disable one of the cores in AH.
I don't want to have to deal with it right now because I also have to replace my joystick & I'm getting to the cut-off date on my RMA for the new video card. I have already paid for the new video card, but I haven't sent in my 7900GTX yet to complete the deal so I still have a little wiggle room.
You know how P/C headaches are; I just want to know from HTC;
A: if they know it will work
B: if they know it will NOT work
C: if they do not have any idea either way
So I can be prepared for any known issues I may run into, as it stands I'm in the dark here. I can only go by the MINIMUM system requirements posted & I am far beyond those.
I might assume from their silence I am the guinea pig & that's fine; I would just like to know ahead of time from HTC what they do or do not know about how a dual gpu single socket card will work with their software.
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Skuzzy's said that AH doesn't support SLI... but I'm not sure why. I thought that AH uses DX9, and it's up to the DX drivers to handle the SLI implementation.
Not sure though. I can't imagine you getting much better performance out of AH2 with the 7950 than the 7900 GTX. I got everything on full with 1280x1024 on my 7900 GTX and it never goes below the max refresh rate of the monitor. Overkill?
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People...it's not about a performance gain in AH. OK?
I have the opportunity to get a brand new $600+ video card for $80 by trading in my used 7900GTX. The 7900GTX's have been buggy because of the memory installed on the cards, allthough mine has been ok so far, I wouldn't mind a brand new card.
The performance is nearly the same on the two cards, I have spoken with people who have them installed. The 7950's are clocked to slower speeds & should be more reliable.
The SLI problem is why I went to the 7900GTX over the two 7800GT's. My SLI would run AH but it stuttered & froze & the frame rates were in the toilet. It ran AA & BF2 just fine, so I knew it was a glitch with AH & AH is my favorite game, I just don't care much for F.P.S.'rs so I want it to work; if it won't then I have to decide if I want a machine just for AHII or one that will run every other program on earth EXCEPT AHII :(
This 7950 card is not the new type of SLI really, it's more like the OLD type. If I'm not mistaken (but could be, I frequently am) there was an OLD style card that did the two bridged GPU's on a single card years ago & did it successfully. It was preffered to the new SLI by the people who had used both from what I have read. I myself never experienced this first hand so I do not know any more than what other peoples opinions have stated.
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Sorry bro, please don't beat me senseless.
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Originally posted by scottydawg
Sorry bro, please don't beat me senseless.
:D I'm sure you have very little to worry about there my friend.
It just seems everyone is thinking I want Skuzzy to recommend hardware or that I have some idea that this is going to up my performance in AHII or that I want some information on it's capabilities or whatever, I'm not sure how people get so confused on internet forums but it seems to happen a lot. At first I thought people were just twisting & ignoring the intent of posts for the sake of starting an arguement but now I'm not so sure; I re-read my words & it still seems clear to me what I meant.
When I built this P/C I got verbally abused on my choice of CPU's by people on other forums who thought I was an idiot for going single core when I could get a dual core for less than what this 4000+ athlon cost, but I did it for AHII because I knew there was a conflict with the dual cores, my current query is no different than the conversations on these forums about the dual core cpu problems.
If Skuzzy doesn't want to answer that's fine. If the card conflicts with AHII I'll just end the service until they catch up with technology. It'll save me money by not having to get a new joystick & paying the monthly fee; I can use the money I save to get a FX57 CPU & probably help keep my wife off my back about "that stupid game".
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Bren shoot Skuzzy an email. Just explain the whats going on and ask him direct if its a bad or good idea to swap em.
Bronk
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Not a bad idea Bronk, I thought that this information might benefit the community at large as these cards are selling fast; it's actually hard to believe I might be the first kid on the block with one. The recent rash of trouble with the 7900 series has got a lot of folks shying away from the Nvidias but I have a good feeling about the 7950's
From everything I can gather, this is not seen as SLI by the mobo so it may work fine with AHII; I hope so, I'd hate to be forced to leave the game over something like a simple hardware upgrade.
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Originally posted by Brenjen
People may have thought the same thing about the dual cpu systems too & they had to disable one of the cores in AH.
Not strictly true -
Depend on CPU make and which OS you're using.
Problem is XP on an AMD dual core, Microsofts screw up, they know it and are attempting to fix it.
Dual core + Win2000 has no probs with AH2.
As for the vid card, I would 'assume' the dual GPU is handled by the graphics drivers.
It's not SLI as it's possible to link two of these cards together using SLI to get a 4 GPU setup.
BIOS update is just to get the mobo to recognize the card properly.
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Actually, the bios updates are not absolutely neccesary, people are running them in mobos like mine without the bios update & others have done before & after tests & saw no difference in the performance.
I intend to try it without the bios flash because I have no floppy drive installed on this machine & I would have to scrounge one out of a HP pavillion windows me machine that I have laying around...too much trouble.
Edit: thanks for making my point kev...it needed disscussion to be brought out into the open, no one person figured it out & at no time did Skuzzy "reccomend" any hardware, it was a simple case of a bug being worked through by the community.
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Well, here's my experience. I'm running 2 7900 GTX's in SLI and havn't had any problems with AH regardless if it is not designed to do anything with it. But from what I read, they dialed the clock back 150 mhz not to fry the thing to give an almost 7900 GTX SLI performance, but just is not quite there.
So bottom line, the 7950 isn't as fast as the 7900 GTX SLI setup. So the 7950 should be for those who don't want to use 2 PCI Express 16 slots and only be left for 1 or 2 usable PCI slots.
Thats how I see it.
But on the plus side, its still early in this cards evolution. If it negates the need to use 2 PCI Express 16 slots and performs better then the 7900 GTX SLI config and has a noticable improvement - like 30 - 50 %, thats another story.
Wolf
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Coolbits works with the 7950 so overclocking the 7950 is an option & some users are doing it but heat is an issue. From what I am reading the 7950 is a *hot* card as in temperature. Some users are reporting 75C under normal load with no O.C.
I think my 7900GTX EGS is begining to have issues so the 7950 is a must have for me before the 7900GTX bites the dust. My Aquamark scores have fallen from near 90,000 to under 70,000 in the past month which has me wondering what's up.
So my 7900 is getting yanked out tomorrow & shipped off to eVGA & hopefully I will have my 7950 by the end of next week. When I get it in & run some tests I will let you all know what I find.
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Have they figured out whats killing all these 79xx series cards yet? I was on evga's website the other day , and the posts on defective 7900's are everywhere. It looks like its a design problem as all 7900 makers are running into the same issue, hope your 7950 is trouble free. 38
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I wouldn't overclock the 7950, period. The dual 7900 SLI setup has one advantage: Space between the cards!
The 7950 has smaller heatsinks and fans to squeaze between the cards, and is not as good as the 7900s separately (more heat, less cooling, in a smaller space!).
So I would NOT overclock the thing, unless you intend to water cool or something like that.
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Originally posted by Krusty
I wouldn't overclock the 7950, period. The dual 7900 SLI setup has one advantage: Space between the cards!
The 7950 has smaller heatsinks and fans to squeaze between the cards, and is not as good as the 7900s separately (more heat, less cooling, in a smaller space!).
So I would NOT overclock the thing, unless you intend to water cool or something like that.
IMHO
The problem with water cooling vid cards is only the gpu gets cooled.
I think the rest of the card overheats and degrades the card slowly.
If I am wrong please correct.
Bronk
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Originally posted by Krusty
I wouldn't overclock the 7950, period. The dual 7900 SLI setup has one advantage: Space between the cards!
The 7950 has smaller heatsinks and fans to squeaze between the cards, and is not as good as the 7900s separately (more heat, less cooling, in a smaller space!).
So I would NOT overclock the thing, unless you intend to water cool or something like that.
There is some truth in that. I pointed out in a previous thread when I built my rig (http://www.hitechcreations.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=174421) I was paranoid about heat almost to the point of being insane. I'd killed so many components I got a box which had provision for a disgusting about of fans. I have 3 120mm fans taking air in, 1 blowing across the hard drives and 2 directly onto the 7900 GTX's, a 57mm side intake and top exhaust, another 120mm exhaust and then a PSU fan.
(http://www.coolermaster.com/product_common_images/fd87edec6820977cde121d80faa6be93.jpg)
Highest i've seen either card get under load is 70* C, while the 2nd card is in the high 40* range. Nvidia took the right step in reducing the dye size to 90mm and dropping the power requirements across the board - but the real crux is just the lack of efficiency of the entire system. Heat is a byproduct of inefficiency. Going up to 600W or 1KW power supplies is a step in the wrong direction. Like skuzzy said - programmers who program in 1000 lines when the job only takes 10 lines are just trying to do something fancy and creative - when it doesn't call to be creative. Thats how bloat forms - problem is, bloat with these integrated system components is cumulative - and heat is the result.
Wolf
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Originally posted by Bronk
IMHO
The problem with water cooling vid cards is only the gpu gets cooled.
I think the rest of the card overheats and degrades the card slowly.
If I am wrong please correct.
Bronk
I think the heat is generated from the GPU, and may spread out from there. Memory creates some, but it's the chips, not the silicon, that generate heat, and by far the biggest heat generator is the GPU. I've heard that you water cool the GPU then the normal case fans are sufficient enough to cool the rest.
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Originally posted by Bronk
IMHO
The problem with water cooling vid cards is only the gpu gets cooled.
I think the rest of the card overheats and degrades the card slowly.
If I am wrong please correct.
Bronk
When water cooling the videocard you can go two ways , get a block that covers the ram along with the chip, Or get ramsinks ,small heatsinks that stick to the ram that use case fan airflow for cooling . Even the cheaper Gpu blocks that only cover the chip usually come with the ramsinks , people that leave the ram uncovered are usually the ones that have heat issues .
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Originally posted by 38ruk
Have they figured out whats killing all these 79xx series cards yet? I was on evga's website the other day , and the posts on defective 7900's are everywhere. It looks like its a design problem as all 7900 makers are running into the same issue, hope your 7950 is trouble free. 38
I believe some of the end users are onto the fix, or at least headed in the right direction...read this thread from the eVGA forums:
possible 7-series fix (http://www.evga.com/community/messageboard/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=17107)
As far as not OC'ing the 7950 Krusty, eVGA's warranty covers OC'ing :aok
My 7950 should be in by next week, they have my old card & my new one should ship out today or at least by monday.
Edit: I should have more accurately labeled the link "possible discovery of the exact problem & possible fix for some 7-series cards" but that seemed a little too long. Read the thread, esspecially if you have a 7900GTX giving you fits.
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I haven't had any problems with my ASUS 7900 GTX. It's overclocked to 700 or something crazy like that.
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My eVGA 7900GTX EGS OC'd to some really insane speeds too; 702mhz core clock & 907mhz memory clock. But I never left it there, the card chewed through everything without the OC, but as I stated earlier, I was gettin a'feared it were a'goin bad.
People seem fairly happy with the 7950's so far, I hope it's smooth sailing for me too.
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Well I wouldn't care if the warranty covers it -- a dead card is still a dead card!! It's a PITA to replace, and use a sub until it gets replaced, time lost, ability to play gone, etc etc.
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Originally posted by Krusty
Well I wouldn't care if the warranty covers it -- a dead card is still a dead card!! It's a PITA to replace, and use a sub until it gets replaced, time lost, ability to play gone, etc etc.
I agree, I'm just pointing out the facts. My system would be o.k. with OC'ing because I had heat issues when I went to the 7900 & I installed some duct work & fans for the GPU, not everyones system would be agreeable to OC'ing though...some with liquid coling would be in even better shape than me. It's a choice & for some it's a bad one, for eVGA customers, it's covered whether it was a bonehead move or not.:D
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so when do you expect to get the 7950 in?
Also, question: Can you use the 7950 now to give yourself SLI with only one PCIe slot?
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A note about "Ram sinks" on video card ramchips
Alot of the aftermarket sinks are using that double back sticky style tape which doesnt let heat transfur very well . its actually better to just let a fan blow across them then to use that setup ... unless you take the time to do it correctly .
put the sinks on with artic silver 5 and a drop of superglue or epoxy in 2 corners of each chip/sink . this also goes for the gpu sink .
they now have h20 blocks that cover the gpu and the ramchips for some of the cards .
I myself havent had a problem with the ram on my cards with just air flow . but i have had overheated gpu's befor .
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Originally posted by Krusty
so when do you expect to get the 7950 in?
Also, question: Can you use the 7950 now to give yourself SLI with only one PCIe slot?
My 7950 should be in next week, my 7900 arrived at eVGA on the 28th & they claim about three days for testing & shipment.
As far as the question about SLI...well, that depends, it is & it isn't. Yes it's SLI...but not really. For all intents & purposes it's a single card, but it is working in the same manner as an SLI set-up would, but the main difference as far as I know is the 8 vs. 16 pipes and the way their jobs are split up. Someone with a broader tech speak vocabulary would need to explain it, I understand how it works, but I can't seem to explain it. Know what I mean?
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AHHHHHHhhhh; got my 7950GX2 in today! Popped it into the machine & ran aquamark3 - 86,000+, I forgot to write down the exact overall score, but the individual scores were; GFX=14,415 & the CPU=10,964
3Dmark06 - 6313, which is better than my 7900GTX EGS scored OC'd
I played AH for about 15 minutes and saw frame rate increases over my 7900GTX EGS. I have my detail set on full & I am using 1024 resolutions. Sitting in the tower I minimized the clipboard & my frame rates went up to 158FPS!
I am running the 7950 at reference speeds until a water cooling solution comes out for it because my temps are GPU#1 - 59C & GPU#2 - 66C at idle as I write this according to everest home.
My ASUS A8N SLI Premium mobo did not require a bios flash at all, & I am using the newest Nvidia 91.31 WHQL certified drivers.
So far I am very pleased with the performance.
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Cool!
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This card is just unreal; I got a frame rate of over 320FPS in my plane looking up at the sky!
But it does run on the hot side, I had to get creative with a 120MM fan & some cardboard duct work to get my at idle temps down to 54C on GPU#1 & 58C on GPU#2 with an ambient room temp of around 90F
I don't think it's really worth $600 but in my position already having the 7900GTX as a full value trade in & seeing as how it was starting to malfunction I think I made the right choice for sure.
If anyone is thinking about getting a high-end card, I can honestly say this one is mind blowing.
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The 7950 offers some advantages over a pair of 7900gtx's...primarily, you get near the performance for almost half the price :-)
A pair of 7900gtx's ain't cheap!
Also, there is the ability to get another 7950 and go QUAD SLI.
The 7950 has been fairing well in the performance department against a pair of 7900's. The differences are minimal in most circumstances.
I'll be building my next rig soon and it will be an AMD X2 AM2 CPU and a pair of 7950's in quad SLI. Will be interesting to see how the quad setup works with AH (if it will).
Just for the record, the real power of SLI and the 7950 doesn't show until you start hitting the higher resolutions. At 1024 SLI doesn't really show much improvement over a good single card solution. This is primarily to do with the clock speeds of the GPU's.
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Well that's another issue... How many peoples' monitors go above 1280x1024? It's pretty uncommon to have a higher resolution than that. Yet these cards support resolutions upwards of 1600 or 2400 wide by "whatever" tall.
It's all well and good to get a card that produces 500fps at 1600 resolution, it's another matter entirely to save up $2000 for a flat panel that can support that resolution!!
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Originally posted by Krusty
Well that's another issue... How many peoples' monitors go above 1280x1024? It's pretty uncommon to have a higher resolution than that. Yet these cards support resolutions upwards of 1600 or 2400 wide by "whatever" tall.
It's all well and good to get a card that produces 500fps at 1600 resolution, it's another matter entirely to save up $2000 for a flat panel that can support that resolution!!
Most CRT's will do over 1280X1024 . My 22'' nec does 1920X1440. Lcd's have come along way in the last couple of years , but for gaming, Crt's are still alive and well .
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my 21' does 1600x1200 .. whats the fastest card now? my 5500 w/256 needs to be upgraded
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I don't know what the fastest card is, but this card is all that & a bag of chips. I am interested to see how it is doing after a couple months since some of the 7900 series failures were after a little use. So far people who have had this card longer than me have absolutely nothing but praise for it.
People all around the net say "unless you have high def your not going to see any difference in the high end cards"
I say that's a little on the false side, it's got more to do with people not getting attention because they have a two or three thousand dollar monitor.
When you have huge monitors set to ultra-high resolutions & they aren't being driven correctly, you see a difference because lesser cards can't drive that type of set-up. When you have a smaller monitor & it's set to lower resolutions it takes more to drop the performance, a lot more. In other words; if you have a dell 30" high def monitor running ultra high resolutions, you will see a performance hit in busy areas with lots of fire & traffic, animated water, trees, butt loads of players ETC even with high end cards, where a smaller monitor running less resolution won't take that hit, you'll keep flying right along with your frame rate maxed out because the monitor isn't driving the card that hard.
My 7800GT could not keep my frame rate maxed out with the 1024 texture pack all sliders on high detail; the 7900GTX did much better before it started to stumble, then it began showing signs of artifacting & mini-freezes. I can't hardly bog this 7950 down anywhere in AH, it chews it up & spits it out.
edit: Oh yeah, btw this card is running 1-gig of video memory; 512MB X 2
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I thought it was 256 x 2, and that if you had quad SLI it was 1GB (2 x (2 x 256))??
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Nope, it's 2 X 512MB.....quad SLI would give 4 X 512MB or 2 Gigs of video memory effectively