GeForce 7800 GTX ***NOT*** dissipating 200W!

wumpus · Post by **wumpus** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 8:04 am

Anyway, if someone uses the VF-700Cu on a 7800 GTX, I'd like to know if the fan can be run lower than @12V, and still be effective.

You'll know tonight. It's killing me that I couldn't do this over the holiday!

Bear in mind that the 7800GTX uses almost exactly the same amount of power as a single 6800 Ultra*, so the results should be the same as well.

* Which is a great deal, considering the 7800gtx is as fast as two 6800 Ultras in SLI, in a number of games at high resolutions and settings! The more shader intensive the game, the more dramatic the difference. It's particularly effective in Battlefield 2 which is quite shader intensive. I went from 1280x960 x noAA x 4xAF at relatively variable framerate, to 1600x1200 x 4xAA x 8xAF and the framerate is MORE stable. Amazing stuff. Not saying it's worth $600, but I am a BF2 junkie, so this was a huge plus for me.

Edward Ng · Post by **Edward Ng** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 8:26 am

wumpus wrote:I am a BF2 junkie, so this was a huge plus for me.

Hey pal you got any favorite server? I wouldn't mind trading fire some time!

My handle's KokoaKnutz.

-Ed

oakdad · Post by **oakdad** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 9:42 am

I wonder why they made it with 2 DVI ports and no D-SUB port.

Tzupy · Post by **Tzupy** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 10:13 am

Oh dear, the 2 GB memory flamewar is going to turn into virtual bloodshed... Why did I have to start it? Please accept my apologies.
Just kidding, have fun!
From the review of the P180 it seems that the GFX cards aren't cooled as well as in the 3000B (that I own). I didn't have the patience to read the whole LOOONG article, please correct me if I am wrong about this.

nutball · Post by **nutball** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 10:37 am

oakdad wrote:I wonder why they made it with 2 DVI ports and no D-SUB port.

DVI can carry analogue, D-SUB can't carry DVI.

So you can't run two DVI flat-panels from DVI+D-SUB, but you can run two analogue monitors from DVI+DVI (assuming they're the right flavour, and you have the DVI->D-SUB widgets).

Edward Ng · Post by **Edward Ng** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 11:57 am

nutball wrote:
oakdad wrote:I wonder why they made it with 2 DVI ports and no D-SUB port.
DVI can carry analogue, D-SUB can't carry DVI.

So you can't run two DVI flat-panels from DVI+D-SUB, but you can run two analogue monitors from DVI+DVI (assuming they're the right flavour, and you have the DVI->D-SUB widgets).

And my XFX 7800 GTX cards both came with two DVI-I -> D-sub converters each.

-Ed

ky · Post by ky » Tue Jul 05, 2005 2:48 pm

PHAT = Pretty Hot And Tempting --- emphasis on HOT

acaurora wrote:"spend SOME loot"?!!!

2 x 7800 GTX != "SOME L00T".
2 x 7800 GTX = PH4T L00T.

wumpus · Post by **wumpus** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 7:07 pm

Anyway, if someone uses the VF-700Cu on a 7800 GTX, I'd like to know if the fan can be run lower than @12V, and still be effective.

Well, I got home and installed the VF-700cu on my 7800gtx and the results are.. interesting. It's hard to compare apples to apples since the last time I was playing was around 11pm last night. It's ~7pm now, so I assume ambient is a little higher.

Right now it's running directly off a 3-pin mobo header, I'm not sure how much voltage that is. It's not loud per se but very clearly audible, so I assume closer to 12v?

Anyway, the absolute peak is 74c during bf2 gameplay wih the 700cu compared to 77c with the stock cooler. I didn't pay attention to the idle temps, so I can't comment on that. It's at 44c right now while I'm typing this message. I'd estimate once I play later tonight the peak will be a full 5c lower.

However the peak isn't the full story. The temps fluctuate a heck of a lot more while playing with the 700cu. And the temps tends to be lower overall than this peak indicates; even when momentarily staring at the sky while dead, the temps will drop quite a bit. With the stock cooling it hit the peaks and stayed there plus or minus a few degrees. Clearly the 700cu is more efficient than the stock cooler; it bleeds off heat much more rapidly.

It also has a nice area cooling effect on the card. As I've mentioned before, the voltage regulation heatsink at the front of the 7800gtx gets crazy hot, almost too hot to touch, along with a lot of the front side of the stock heatsink. It's noticeably cooler with the 700cu blowing air over it.

So, tentative thumbs up. The stock cooler is fairly quiet for a stock cooler, but it's pretty lame overall for a $600 video card (no copper??).

The stock cooler is actually pretty darn wimpy when disassembled. Very low profile and all aluminum. It takes about 20 screws to remove it, I kept thinking I had removed them all and I'd find another one.

The 7800gtx has a weird 4-pin (!?) fan header on the card. Black, yellow, green, blue in that order. So I can't tell how to match up the 3 pins on the zalman header to the card at all. Ideally I would like the 700cu fan to be voltage/temp controlled somehow, rather than running at a constant speed off a mobo header.. ideas?

wumpus · Post by **wumpus** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 8:01 pm

Anyway, if someone uses the VF-700Cu on a 7800 GTX, I'd like to know if the fan can be run lower than @12V, and still be effective.

I just tried looping 3dMark05 test 2 @ 1600x1200 with the fan at 5v-- I stopped the test when it creeped up to 93c. 5v is a no-go. 12v performance appears to have a little wiggle room for lowered voltage. I'd say somewhere in the range of 7v-12v should work with the 7800gtx.

Unfortunately I don't have a zalman fanmate handy so I can't really play with the in-between speeds at all. Back to 12v for me.

Oh, and these tests are at 480/1300 on my 7800gtx, so if your card is running at 430/1200 you might get slightly better results.

Tzupy · Post by **Tzupy** » Wed Jul 06, 2005 3:32 am

@wumpus: thank you for the detailed description of your experience with the 7800 GTX and VF-700. It seems that the design of the stock cooler is better than it looks (compared with the 6800U). The main issue seems to be finding a way to connect the odd 4-pin from the card to the VF-700, so it can be temperature controlled. I wouldn't mind running the VF-700 fan at 12V when gaming, but when programming it better be around 5V.

wumpus · Post by **wumpus** » Wed Jul 06, 2005 6:58 am

According to the GamePC review of the 7800gtx, the 4-pin header is for "pulse wave modulation" fan control. I am not sure this can be mapped to a traditional 3-pin header..

(from a different review, but same deal:)

The Supermicro board also offers 4-pin fan connectors on the motherboard, while Tyan is still offering 3-pin variants. The new 4-pin fan connector allows for PWM (Pulse Wave Modulation), which allows for far superior fan speed management, although Intel's new retail boxed Xeon coolers do not take advantage of these new four pin connectors as of yet.

RockLee · Post by **RockLee** » Thu Jul 07, 2005 9:10 pm

I just ordered a 7800GTX and wanted to know some of your experiences with using the Zalman 7700 on it. Did you need to use ramsinks and what kind did you use? Would it be possible to run the Zalman @5V when idle and only turn it up during gaming sessions? I'll be too distracted when gaming to care if the PC's loud anyway.

I'm wondering its possible to tweak the 2D clock speed so it puts out even less heat when you're idling. Has anybody tried this?

Thanks in advance.

wumpus · Post by **wumpus** » Thu Jul 07, 2005 10:55 pm

See this thread for a way to make the vf-700cu temperature controlled.. eg, slow RPM at idle, fast RPM at load.

Edward Ng · Post by **Edward Ng** » Fri Jul 08, 2005 3:06 am

RockLee wrote:I'm wondering its possible to tweak the 2D clock speed so it puts out even less heat when you're idling. Has anybody tried this?

Thanks in advance.

The 2D and 3D clocks are set separately, yes. I've also noticed that the card, when in 2D or idle runs fairly quietly, but when it kicks the fan in under load or in 3D, is significantly more audible--note, however, that even under load, it is quieter than 6800 Ultra at stock!!!

You're welcome.

-Ed

pony-tail · Post by **pony-tail** » Fri Jul 08, 2005 9:54 pm

Damm - I not long ago bought a 6800 ultra !
Drool - Drool - Drool

nici · Post by **nici** » Sat Jul 09, 2005 1:31 am

Pulse Width Modulation, not Wave

Edward Ng · Post by **Edward Ng** » Sat Jul 09, 2005 6:34 am

My bad.

IonYz · Post by **IonYz** » Sun Jul 10, 2005 12:33 am

This will be my first PC build in nearly 8 years (I switched to Mac a while ago) and are in the process of building a gaming and desktop PC for home. I'll be following this thread closely.

So the facts; as powerful or nearly so against a 6800 Ultra SLI, yet lower power and noise then a single 6800 Ultra. This reminds me of the recent Hitachi review where, sure, it was louder then the Spinpoint yet quieter when you compared multi-drive setups to it.

I'm not sure what to do. I have a 1680x1050 LCD that likes to be capped a to 60 fps. I finally want to play games at my native game rate without dropping below 60 fps. It doesn't have to look incredible but my short time with anti-aliasing has me wanting it.

6800 GT SLI, more power, more heat, more noise, but cheaper up front (purchase another 6800 GT later). Or just buy a single 7800 GTX. I have a thing though after buying that Dual processor P3 setup back in the day. I purchased one processor and that other socket never got filled, I just bought a whole new board. Don't want to go thought that again.

bsoft · Post by **bsoft** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 12:20 am

What you probably *don't* know about the 7800GTX is that it has at least three different internal clocks that vary depending on load. It's a bit like Cool n' Quiet, but better because individual sections of the GPU can vary their clock based on demand.

While the 7800GTX is a hot GPU, with 300+ million transistors, it's still lower power than the 6800U. That means that we can expect mainstream GPUs that are considerably lower power from NV in the future. Expect to see a 7600GTX that uses 30%+ less power than the 6600GT while offering superior performance.

Not that you can't run a quiet 6600GT - my fanless card runs great (though I use a Panaflo L1a @ 5V to keep it cooler). But less power usage is always a good thing.

Tzupy · Post by **Tzupy** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 3:23 am

The 7600 GT that I expect is 4+12 pipes at 600 / 1200 MHz. 128 MB memory and 128-bit, unfortunately. I believe it's going to dissipate 55-60 W, being manufactured at 90 nm. I hope I'm wrong about the 55-60 W, but even that could be nicely cooled with a VF-700 @5V. What I'd like to suggest to Zalman is to have an option for PWM fan on the VF-700. If anyone of the moderators reads this, and thinks it would be a good idea, please relay it to Zalman.

IonYz · Post by **IonYz** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 12:21 pm

bsoft wrote:What you probably *don't* know about the 7800GTX is that it has at least three different internal clocks that vary depending on load. It's a bit like Cool n' Quiet, but better because individual sections of the GPU can vary their clock based on demand.

Cool. That should keep it quiet (relatively) during web surfing.

Would the BFG car be louder then the other ones on the market now? I know they are overclocking the card slightly but they all look identical, reference issue cards.

Edward Ng · Post by **Edward Ng** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 5:28 pm

You'll know in a few days; I ended up returning my XFX cards to NewEgg since one of them appears to be faulty and won't work right in SLI mode--don't have a third card to help figure out which of the two it was, so I sent both back and NewEgg is currently out of stock on XFX cards, so they just refunded me my money.

Just so happens Dell has a nice deal on BFG cards so I decided to get two of those from them instead; ended up saving money and getting higher clocked cards at the same time. Dell indicates that it typically takes 1-2 weeks to ship them, but when I ordered my 2405FPW they indicated one month for delivery and it arrived on my doorstep the very same week, so those estimates are totally useless.

-Ed

IonYz · Post by **IonYz** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 9:11 pm

That sucks Ed. 24" Dell? Very nice. My 20" Apple Cinema has been treating me rather nice too. Widescreen is great.

Keep us posted.

halcyon · Post by **halcyon** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 9:49 pm

Those of you clocking and changing fans on 7800 series, be sure to understand what Bsoft is saying.

7800 has multiple clocks (speeds) even for 3D power mode.

This means, that it will vary it's own speed depending on at least load and temperature.

So, to make sure your cooling comparison is equal, you must check out that the card does not perform in clock speed mode A with cooler 1 and in clock speed mode B with cooler 2.

Using both coolers, the card must perform in the same switched speed mode.

Only then are the temperatures relatively comparable.

Tzupy · Post by **Tzupy** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 3:18 am

@halcyon: do you imply that by installing a VF-700, that hasn't got a PWM fan, the 7800 GTX could automatically run at other speeds than stock? One more reason to get a PWM fan on the VF-700.

Edward Ng · Post by **Edward Ng** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 7:11 am

Tzupy wrote:@halcyon: do you imply that by installing a VF-700, that hasn't got a PWM fan, the 7800 GTX could automatically run at other speeds than stock? One more reason to get a PWM fan on the VF-700.

No, he's talking about the fact that different parts of the core run at different speeds.

-Ed

Mystr_Byrnz · Post by **Mystr_Byrnz** » Sat Jul 23, 2005 2:14 pm

Great. . .just great. .

I've gone and let myself talk me into buying a 7800gtx instead of a 6800gt.

The GF won't be happy about that. LOL

GeForce 7800 GTX NOT dissipating 200W!

The future of NV's GPUs

Re: The future of NV's GPUs