you will be able to run oblivion at 1600x1200 with full aa/af/hdr on at sick framerates :) You can do that with a single GTX... easily... There are some outdoor scenes in Oblivion that can [bring] the GTX down to 30fps or lower even at that resolution, so having SLI would help. And then there will ...

Some have argued against using two PSUs, such as if you join them together the voltage won't be stable, or that if you run them separately there wouldn't be enough load on the 3.3V and 5V rails on the PSU not connected to the motherboard. Some say these are not good for the PSUs. What do you guys th...

A test by Anandtech: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2873&p=9 Ambient noise: 38.1 dBA. 8800 GTX (7 cards tested): 48-49* dBA @ unknown distance 8800 GTS (1 card tested): 48 dBA *except the Sparkle GTX at 55.7dBA In the test, the cards did not produce any extra noise under load. I notic...

Is it possible to estimate the dBA @ 1m based on dBA @ 1 inch? SPCR already has this VGA cooling forum. Why not do some reviews on the latest cards? It will draw in more readers and make them think about computer noise. Until then all we have to go by are reader comments and a few tests for noise in...

8800 GTS (Leadtek, 320mb?): "The noise is surprisingly low, compaired to the other GF cards I have had. It's just a thad bit "louder" than my previous X1800GTO, with a Zalman VF 900CU. ... At 19C room temp, the fan was set to lower speed. At full throttle, the fan is still pretty silent." http://www...

A noise measurement: 8800GTX system idle: 43dBA @ 1 inch system load: 49-51dBA @ 1 inch 8800GTS 640mb system idle: 43-44dBA @ 1 inch system load: 45-48dBA @ 1 inch http://techreport.com/reviews/2007q1/geforce-8800s/index.x?pg=11 This one seems to indicate that the GTX is not quieter than the GTS. Or...

Since SPCR doesn't review video cards the noise level of stock GPU fans can seem a bit vague. Here are some user reports I've read: 8800 GTX: A poster on another site stated that the stock cooler is quieter than the Antec Tri-Cool 120mm fan at 800-900rpm, which would be close to 20-23dBA@1m accordin...

Doesn't it seem risky to draw 440w from a PSU rated at 450w for prolonged periods, even considering the AC/DC difference? you will be able to run oblivion at 1600x1200 with full aa/af/hdr on at sick framerates :) I wonder how well it can run 2560x1600 or 3840x1024 (3-monitors) with everything maxed.

So how quiet is that 7600GT, Runn3r? And how's it going with the charts?

Got any links to getting multimonitor SLI support in Windows? I think Nvidia never supported it officially.[/url] It's simply not possible in Windows, as far as I know. I thought you're referring to some new hacks recently. There was a method which involved using a PCI videocard but it may not work...

echosystm wrote:Asus 7100GS passive

7100GS uses turbocache, it can use up your system RAM.

I just noticed on NewEgg that they are selling a special Matrox G450 PCI card that supports 4 monitors. Unfortunately, it is $550 -- and it has a fan... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814106001 The PNY card posted by el_ above is passive, supports 4 monitors and costs $450. S...

Got any links to getting multimonitor SLI support in Windows? I think Nvidia never supported it officially.

An easy way I know is to use the Matrox TripleHead2Go adaptor which splits one output into three.

yeah I'll be using the screens primarily for financial reports.

Are you planning on looking at T h e M a t r i x ? That depends, is this the Matrix? Personally i think 3 monitors is optimal. My opinion might change if i got a 30" monitor, though ;) Yeah I kind of lied about quad monitors. I need 4 ports but I'll be using 3 mostly, with the 4th one being a 120" ...

Hi, have you checked out SPCR's official recommendations for hard drives, PSUs and heatsinks? Passive versions of 7300 GT, 7600 GS, or 6600 should be adequate video cards if not used for gaming. Are you sure 1gb of memory will be enough for your music apps? 2-4gb is often recommended for the sampler...

Found a link, about 30w for GF4Ti4200:
http://www.tecchannel.de/_misc/img/deta ... A330BF900C

So a 8600GT uses about 15watts more. Maybe it can be cooled by a quiet 92mm or 120mm fan.

Does anyone know roughly how many watts a gaming videocard from ~5 years ago consumes? I have a Geforce 4 Ti which I've cooled simply by unplugging the stock fan and blowing a quiet 80mm fan at 12V on top of the GPU. Basically I'm curious if one could do the same thing to a lower end Geforce 8 card ...

Yeah I'm aware of that card. It's a nice solution but costlier versus two basic dual head cards. If you do any gaming you'd need another card too.

rickster wrote:here's a review of it on the xtreme forums
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/sho ... p?t=136416

This heatsink can apparently occupy up to 5 slots with a fan. From the pic it seems you can't install any other card except one PCI card at the edge.

Thanks Neil. I read that some people have had issues getting three independent monitors. Apparently two of the monitors may be spanned together instead of being separate screens. Have you had this problem with your setup?

How loud is the GPU's stock fan compared to the Nexus 120mm in your case?

Some other Nvidia cards are known to withstand up to 120C before artifacts appeared.

An issue with HR-03 Plus:
Compatible with Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX video cards only.
For 8800 GTS card, a seperate HSI heatsink is required (available by mid March, free to existing HR-03 Plus owners.)
http://www.thermalright.com/a_page/main ... 3_plus.htm

Thanks guys. ~ 8A in full-load in DX9. How did you derive 8A out of that chart? Club3D 8800GTS|320MB / Asus P5B-E / 2x1GB Apacher DDR2 / Core2Duo E6600 / Seagate 320GB SATA2 / Samsung DVDRW / Arctic Silentium PRO 500W 80+ / Windows XP How loud is the stock fan on your 8800GTS, in comparison to other...

Anyone knows how much power 8800 GTS (320mb) draws?

Seems 7600GS SLI is sometimes slower/faster than one GT depending on the benchmark: http://www.techspot.com/review/21-geforce-7600gs-sli-performance/page4.html Now that I think about it, instead of getting two of the same card, I can instead get a much faster card plus a second card for 2D apps only...

If I drop two dual-head PCI-E cards into the computer, should I be able to get quad monitor support with regular drivers by default?

And if I use the same SLI-compatible cards I'll also get SLI when using one monitor only, right? I'm thinking of using two passive 7600GSs.

Thanks, the thread is convincing. I think I'll either use a separate controller or forget about the whole thing. But apparently the Highpoint cards are also quite CPU intensive: "On full speed transfers (either read or write), the cpu usage can go as high as 50% (average 30% throughout) on an Athlon...

Some new motherboards support RAID 5, eg. Asus P5N32-E SLI/SLI Plus. Presumably you just need to plug in a few SATA harddrives to get this feature. Has anyone tried this out, and how well does it work?

P.S. Name some other boards that support RAID 5 if you know them, thanks.