Slashdot Mirror
GeForce 7950 GT Launches With Passive Cooling
An anonymous reader writes "NVIDIA's GeForce 7950 GT comes with great performance at an attractive $299/£225 launch price. Incredibly, XFX's pre-overclocked card comes with a passive cooling solution. From the article: 'There is no doubting that NVIDIA's GeForce 7950 GT is faster and cheaper than the GeForce 7900 GT that launched at the same price point earlier in the year. There is a lot to like about the product, and there is even more to like about XFX's implementation. It's generally a match for ATI's Radeon X1900XT 512MB in popular games.'"
Cooling can always be made active these days. Just buy something like Zallman Cooler (http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N8 2E16835118117). Installation (which replaces the original cooling) is 10 minutes, and the cards these days are made with standard mounting, and it's usually gets your card down 10-15 degrees. The only drawback is that it makes 1-slot card to be 2-slot wide.
Cheers,
From TFA: "While we're on the subject of the card being fanless, you're going to need to have good airflow inside your system to keep this card adequately cool."
I've used a few passive cards before, and they've all crashed my games when they haven't had airflow over them. I thought elimination of airflow (i.e. noise) was the purpose of passive coolers?
The best compromise between noise and performance is, imo, to buy an active Zalman cooler like the VF700 on my X800. It has a 5V "quiet" setting that keeps the card cool and very quiet as well as a 12V setting that's great for overclocking. Their design is pretty different from any stock cooler, and once you see the difference in performance, you'll understand why.
Last week, NVIDIA launched the affordably priced, sub-$200 GeForce 7900 GS and announced the higher-end, $299 GeForce 7950 GT with just a preview. It seems NVIDIA and their partners only needed a week to get the 7950 GT ready. This article at HotHardware.Com details the specifications and performance of the new GeForce 7950 GT as it relates to NVIDIA's and ATI's current products. Another interesting facet to this article is that the card tested, was HDCP ready, factory-overclocked and passively cooled.
You got modded funny, but the thing is really hot: without an extra fan in the case, the article mentions "temperatures approaching 110 degrees Celcius (sic)" (for people not familiar with degrees Celsius, 100 degrees is the boiling point of water at normal atmospheric pressure).
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
But, beyond the stupid geek factor, what would be the point?
The GPU is far more powerful than the CPU at what it was designed to do but I bet it would be slow when dealing with generic computation. The GPU is (essentiall) a highly specialized processor which is designed to process 3D data at an amazing rate; in part the GPUs power is caused because its processing can be highly distributed (for the color of one pixel is not dependant on another so, in theory, you could have 1,920,000 shader pipelines that each shade one pixel at a resolution of 1600X1200); this is not the case in general.
But, does it run linux*? *have good drivers? Yes. Better than ATI at least. Not open source, but the drivers are good. My 7800GS works great. Q4 runs faster under Linux than under Windows here.
uh..huh.
Taken from Newegg:
Package Contents: 2 x DVI to VGA Adapter
I think they thought of you when they put teh card in teh boxxorz!
Karnal
Most video cards certainly do. I know for a fact nVidia cards so. They have different clock speeds for 2D (using no 3d applications, just your desktop and regular apps), and 3D in which the card clocks to maximium. Mobile versions of these graphic cards are even more power concious, they clock down even further, or employ other methods (such as shutting down parts of the GPU that are not being used completly, and reducing the number of PCI-E lanes used).
Yes I am. I thought the etl.cs.luc.edu (*.luc.edu = Loyola University Chicago) link in my URL field was a clear give away.
And just as an FYI, The optimum coffee brewing temerature is between 194 to 204 degrees Fahrenheit (90 - 95.55-ish degrees Celsius. (at least according to http://metropoliscoffee.com/university/brewing/pe
Navicula hydraulica plena anguilarum est. Omnes castelli tuus nostri sunt. Ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta.
It seems more natural to talk of outdoor air temperature in Fahrenheit.
In a temperate region (like the United States), the range of 0-100 degrees enumerates the temperatures most people will experience through the course of a year.
0 = dangerously cold
25 = freezing
50 = cool
75 = warm
100 = dangerously hot
OTH I find it much simpler to speak of temperatures when concerning computers in degrees Celcius because, again, the range is more intuitive.
0 = your condensor is broken
25 = room temperature
50 = okay
75 = too hot
100 = meltdown
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON