Gainward Bliss 7800GS+ AGP "7900GT" - just got on

[CoolColJ]

This card is basicly a 7900gt in AGP drag....yes it does have 24 pipelines and 512megs of memory but runs on AGP, and can be clocked up close to 7900GTX specs

I have an Antec Sonata case, with a lot of quiet components, including the old Zalman heat-piped cooled Radeon 9800, which is pretty quiet with a small fan at low RPM, but cranked for gaming with my fan controller.

My Antec 380 watt power supply that came with the case only has one 12volt drive cable outlet, so I had to use 2 sets of adapters to get enough drive molex sockets to hook up the 2 required for the Gainward "7900gt" card.

So that makes at P4 2.8c overclocked to 3.5g, 3 hard drives, 1gig of ram, DVD/CDRW drive, plus 2 sound cards, a scsci card with zip drive and few things on the USB port and the Gainward card which I overclocked a bit......and it all runs fine!!!!


400w minimum power supply required? What a load of bull. I ran a few games for a few hours and had no probs. The videocard didn't complain at all - idles at 44 degrees and hits 50 under load after been overclocked slightly.

And my CPU isn't exactly the lowest energy ones out there too



http://www.silentpcreview.com/article28-page4.html

this page is right on the money, an average fairly high end PC is unlikely to go past 300w unless your using SLI or crossfire systems. As long as your using a good quality power supply.



It is quite a bit audible than my old Radeon 9800when I first turn the PC on, low kind of rumble, but seems blend away after a while, when the power supply fan picks up as the temps rise a bit.



I didn't notice much of a difference in look or colour, maybe the Radeon is slightly sharper on desktop 2D stuff. Or darker, cleaner, more defined I think. On my Sony 21inch Trinitron anyway.

One I thing I miss on the ATI card is being able to assign hotkeys to gamma, brightness and contrast and tweak them ingame! It's a must for me.

So I will definitely go back to ATI on my next video card for that reason alone

and the sharper/cleaner 2D desktop image quality. Since this card is free, I can't really complain about this



But wow, I went back and tried all my recent games like COD2 and Oblivion, and cranked the settings up and damn I have been missing out

SM3 and HDR is a whole new world. The Shaders just add freaky detailing.

COD2 looks so detailed and busy with all the extra fruit. Pretty good frame rates. Oblivion on 1152x864 with HDR, and my Sony monitor set to dynamic brightness setting, when outdoors looks so life-like, the sky/clouds, and the colour temp/glare is like real sunlight landscape!!

Frame rate outside with everything on max goes between 20-45fps on average. There is an area in the main city where the dock is that made my 9800 crawl at 1-5 fps! Here I get 17fps, so it's better but not great, wonder why though...

there are still some annoying jerks, but it maybe due to needing more than 1 gig of ram.



My Radeon 9800 never looked like this, the lighting is fantastic, and not at over 70-140fps indoors. No AA with HDR though...

That semi-transparent effect you see is my staff camo'ed by my Chameleon robe

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I think I turned self shadowing off by mistake which may explain the lack of shadows with the stuff sitting on the stone top...



but in game now, the system is quite a bit quieter, since I don't have to crank the fan up on the Zalman heatpipe my Radeon 9800 had before, since the Artic cooler on the gainward card is set and exhausts the hot air outside the case.

[Zorander]

So are you saying that 2D quality is definitely still better with the ATI card?

[CoolColJ]

So are you saying that 2D quality is definitely still better with the ATI card?

it's slight, but noticable to me

just cleaner, defined and more contrasty. This is on a Sony Trinitron CRT monitor though. Not a night and difference though, but it's there.
Kinda warmer feeling...lol I'm an artist so it's hard to explain the feeling of what you see

some people may not notice it

[Zorander]

Darn... I have a Sony Trinitron monitor too and I am pretty picky about image quality. I'm sure I will easily notice the difference as well.

Do you know if the coolers on most 6800GS cards can be replaced with quieter models (if so, which cooler?)? My 9800Pro currently runs on the AC VGA Silencer and, while quiet, could be quieter in my room. I'm sure the stock cooler on 6800GS cards will be considerably louder. By the way too, I happen to be in the market for a new (AGP) video card and was comparing the 6800GS and x850Pro. Any opinions between these two?

Cheers!

[CoolColJ]

not sure on the cooler situation as I haven't done much research there, but I know that this Artic Silencer on this card is definitely louder than my Zalman heatpipe on the 9800 with the small optional fan which I run at slow speeds - and I can turn up or down with the Zalman fan controller. Something I can't do on this Gainward card as it's self-controlled.

I would go with the 6800GS if you want Shader Model 3 support and HDR.
The 850XT will basicly be a faster version of the Radeon 9800 as far as features go, only SM2 and no HDR support in Oblivion as a result.
So the 6800GS is more future proof

but if you want to stay ATI, there are some other ATI AGP cards around now, with SM3 support but low end ones though. Such as the 1600

[CoolColJ]

ok according to Rivatuner my fan is running at 100% all the time, even in 2D no wonder it's a bit louder than I expected, but even then it's not really that loud

cool, now I just have to get it to throttle down to 50% like it's supposed to...

[CoolColJ]

well the screen goes blank in Oblivion after 10-20secs if I clock my CPU past a FSB of 230mhtz or about 3.2g, but the menu overlays still work.

Drop the CPU speed back to 3.2g or under then it's fine

I guess the powersupply must be maxed out on juice, guess I need that Antec NeoHE 550 watt powersupply now

And on Rivatuner's stat logging, Oblivion maxed out my 1gig of ram after 5mins of play. So I might as well get that 2 gig memory kit while I'm at it too.

[CoolColJ]

well it looks like my CPU is a bit of a bottle neck, I guess it is getting a bit long in the tooth now, even if it's clock speeds are still very good

I ran that X3 rolling demo, and not matter how low or high the settings on the video card were, the frame rates didn't change all that much. Especially in the 2nd part of the demo with the combat and stuff, framerate gets really ragged getting as low as 8, averaging around 20-25.

So I probbaly won't bother getting more ram or a new PSU. I'll need to remove the massive Zalman heatsink and fan to get the power supply out, something I'm not too keen on right now...

Plus I can't use DDR ram in my future system so no point in getting more.
Looks like I'll stay put and get a new Intel Conroe system together, with 4 gigs of DDR2 ram to future proof myself and never have to use a disk cache
Just a matter of when to jump onto the new wagon....

I imagine if I had one of the new cpus, the minimum framerates would be doubled up.

Some more Oblivion eye candy - if I said these were ingame screenshots 5 years ago, nobody would have believed me!

Not only that but everything in the scene animates and moves - the clouds, sky, trees grass etc, and not only that but the weather, sun, lighting all change dynamicly in real time. CG didn't look much better 10 years ago...


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I took a look at HL2:Lost coast with everything maxed yesterday and I was rather unimpressed....

Now to try out more games!