Wish List Puter equipment purchases...

[bobby 55]

At resolutions like 1920×1200 2GB is most certainly overkill. Just look at the benchmarks at those resolutions. It's always good to have some headroom, but even 1GB is actually a lot.
Also, I'd wait until the AMD 7 series gets released. It won't be long now.

Cheers, for the moment I have no choice but to wait.

At least I can do some further investigating into it all in the mean time.

[AEmer]

yes, presumably the 7 series will be here soon, and nvidia will have a card to compete with it. Yes, waiting for that could provide some big returns.

Concerning the 1gb thing...Look at the dragon age 2 numbers here:

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/10/ ... n_review/8

I suspected this might be the case. Clearly, FXAA games don't need the 1gb of ram, whereas the FSAA games do. This is because FSAA esentially renders more pixels, whereas FXAA handles it in post processing.

I actually don't know which type of anti aliasing is supperior, but I can tell you that this is what I expected; the ceiling of 1gb performance is just above 1920x1200... and some games are able to thrash the graphics ram at even that resolution.

The typical solution would be to enable blackbars and go for a 1920x1080 experience to get an extra 10% performance, or 1600x1200 to get an extra 15%, which isn't ideal but usually not a big problem....it's much better to do without a bit of screen real estate than running something non-native, imo.

Tbh. 1gb does seem like enough for all current-gen games, but I just wouldn't personally be comfortable buying such a card right now unless my screens resolution was just a tiny bit lower.

[bobby 55]

Yeah it's the headroom that kinda sways me to your thinking AEmer. A 2gig card and a quad core 3point something should(!?) run most games for a few more years. I can see the future with hologram games. When you're in the game ; you're in the game , will have a whole new meaning.

[AEmer]

Yeah it's the headroom that kinda sways me to your thinking AEmer. A 2gig card and a quad core 3point something should(!?) run most games for a few more years. I can see the future with hologram games. When you're in the game ; you're in the game , will have a whole new meaning.

I don't see any way that setup won't last you for 3 years with no problems. I'm on a 3 year old card, and it still makes amazing things happen.

[gamer0004]

Those differences are remarkable indeed. Still, I would wait for the 7 series. Nvidia won't have their lineup ready at the same time though, they will release their mobile GPUs around the same time AMD will release their mid-range desktop cards IIRC.

[AEmer]

Those differences are remarkable indeed. Still, I would wait for the 7 series. Nvidia won't have their lineup ready at the same time though, they will release their mobile GPUs around the same time AMD will release their mid-range desktop cards IIRC.

The 7 series may be really good, that's true. AMD has a knack for dissapointments in the CPU scene, and occasionally manage it in the GPU scene too, but it could certainly be good.

The 6900 series is a damn good product line, though. There's a build in HD Digital Audio card inthere that'll let you enjoy blueray audio and 8 channel lpcm on a surround sound system, an otherwise expensive previlege, and it can easily run 3 screens....and the temperatures and power usage are low at idle and therefore the card is very quiet under normal computer use.
Not to mention, it is very cheap. You get the best AMD GPU on the market for 250$, and it's fully featured. That's ridiculous.

I'm somewhat more curious to see what NVidia comes up with, since I figure AMD will just push out a 50% increase in the pixel throughput, and that'll be that. It's been a year, so according to moors law that's 50%. Maybe they'll make the card slightly quieter, maybe they'll finally let you use both of the dvi's and the hdmi at the same time.

But Nvidia has that whole phys-x thing going on, and already being on one of those cards, if their next performer is up to scatch, I might let my old gtx260 become my brand new physics GPU =P I'm not hopeful, but you never know.

[gamer0004]

The 7 series may be really good, that's true. AMD has a knack for dissapointments in the CPU scene, and occasionally manage it in the GPU scene too, but it could certainly be good.

The 6900 series is a damn good product line, though. There's a build in HD Digital Audio card inthere that'll let you enjoy blueray audio and 8 channel lpcm on a surround sound system, an otherwise expensive previlege, and it can easily run 3 screens....and the temperatures and power usage are low at idle and therefore the card is very quiet under normal computer use.
Not to mention, it is very cheap. You get the best AMD GPU on the market for 250$, and it's fully featured. That's ridiculous.

I'm somewhat more curious to see what NVidia comes up with, since I figure AMD will just push out a 50% increase in the pixel throughput, and that'll be that. It's been a year, so according to moors law that's 50%. Maybe they'll make the card slightly quieter, maybe they'll finally let you use both of the dvi's and the hdmi at the same time.

But Nvidia has that whole phys-x thing going on, and already being on one of those cards, if their next performer is up to scatch, I might let my old gtx260 become my brand new physics GPU =P I'm not hopeful, but you never know.

It's certainly not one of the most quiet cards available, at least with a stock cooler. It has lots of functionality, but in terms of performance I always thought it was a bit meh. It was fine from a price/performance view, but nothing special. And I would certainly not recommend eyefinity gaming on one 6950... It can't run some games like Crysis Warhead and Metro 2033 on max settings at high (single-screen) resolutions at decent framerates. For eyefinity you'll need at least 2 GPUs for proper gaming.

[bobby 55]

I'll need to win the lottery to have multiple screens/GPUs. I'd have to invest in a mobo capable of running multiple GPUs as well?! As long as it can handle Skyrim, Arkham City, and perhaps BF3, I'll be happy.

[gamer0004]

Most motherboards support CFX or SLI. But yeah this rig will most certainly run Skyrim maxed out, Arkham City and BF3 I don't know for sure as I don't have those games myself but they will certainly run at pretty high settings with a great framerate.

[AEmer]

@ Gamer:
Hrm... I was sure I had some hard data on the cooling of the 6950 back when I looked it over last, but I'll be damned if I can find it. It's certainly not silent, especially not in games, but as I recall it is quiet in desktop usage. No matter.

It comes down to whether you can run with ambient occlusion or not for most newer games.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/12/ ... d_review/5

It appears to run Metro 2033 rather well, although personally I would want it to have a minimum framerate above 30 fps, and I don't think it has that at 1920x1200, even without AA...with everything maxed out, of course.

Anyway, yes, it can run all of those games, although it's supposedly noisy during battlefield (friend of mine with this setup plays battlefield). If you disable AO in Arkham and considering you're without physx graphics at all, you should be able to chug along at a constant 60 fps, with FXAA and everything else maxed. I can max everything in Skyrim, so that'll work for you as well.

[bobby 55]

Cheers guys, with headphones on I don't know that the noise would be greatly distracting. I would prefer a bit of noise to a bit..ahem, of overheating.

[AEmer]

hahah yes. That's my view exactly.

You'll either need to get a videocard that performs worse, or you need to deal with noise during gaming. You still obviously need to manage it, which is why I suggest getting noise-dampened cases with lots of ventilation and some scheme for ramping up fan speed for the intake and exhaust fans during gaming.

I have 4 case fans installed at the moment and a massive cpu fan and cooler...it was horrible to get it installed in my case, there's just not enough room to work inthere comfortably, but it's no problem in the fractal case (though you may need an extra pair of hands if you want to install it quickly and not use a pair of pliers in your teeth....). All the fans are linked up with temperature sensors, so when I game the entire case gets a boost in air throughput.

That's why I like the motherboard I suggested; it has a really hard to get feature without having to use a particular kind of fan (PWM) that I'm not a fan of...if you'll excuse the pun.

Essentially, it undervolts my fans during normal operation, and feeds them 12 volt when things get hot. I put a similar setup in one friends fractal design case, and with the 6950 it appears to work well when things heat up. Essentially, it should make thermals a worry-free proposition, if you remember to clean the dust filters.

[gamer0004]

Noise does most certainly not equal good cooling! Typically, a video card making lots of noise is a card getting really hot. A good cooler means the fan can spin relatively slow at the same stress levels while keeping it cool. Only when the card can't really handle the heat anymore it starts to increase fan speeds to a point where they are noisy. The 6950 stock isn't terribly good, but there are many good non-factory standard cards available with way better coolers.

@Aemer: sure, the 6950 stock noise and heat levels are acceptable, but they are certainly not one of the strong aspects of that GPU.
Also, personally I find Ambient occlusion to have a rather insignificant impact on graphics quality, whereas AA has a huge impact on quality. But these are personal preferences. Anyway, with maxed out I also mean with at least 4×AA, which means one 6950 probably wouldn't handle it at max settings (including, like I said, anti aliasing at at a high resolution). Compare also these benchmarks. At the equivalent of 4×AA, one 6950 only manages to perform at an average of 25 fps at a decent resolution (1920×1200). Which is unplayable, but that doesn't really matter because it's not that important to have everything at max.

[AEmer]

Of course, nothing is cooled by noise alone

It's just a side effect. I've tried a third party GPU cooler once; it wasn't a good decision. I think what you want to go with is a non-stock-cooler card if you care about noise (there are some good ones outthere), or a card that has good acoustic characteristics with the stock cooler. Just checked in with my friend, and he never notices noise from his 6950-running rig unless his computer is idling (and therefore there are no sound effects), and I know myself that the noise from his computer idling is just a low hum.

One think I really like about nvidia and amd current-gen stock coolers is that they exhaust the air they take in. That's a big plus when you're running your system fans based off of internal temperatures...but also a big plus in general. I find myself at an average lifetime for a graphics card of less than 3 years, whereas much of the rest of my system generally lasts at least 5, so if the graphics card doesn't let the heat bleed out too much, that's great.

Generally, as already said, I only care about idle noise, and my gtx260 idles quietly enough not to distinguish itself from the rest of the system..and as far as I could figure, the 6950 idled quiter.

[bobby 55]

In my roving around I did some fan speed control equipment for about $80 IIRC. I do realize noise doesn't mean heat reduction, my point was that I can put up with a noisy card if it's performing and not idling on 62 celcius.