I’m tempted to get one now that supply is a little less tight, but I kept hearing they had really loud fans. Any particular brands to recommend/stay away from? I’ve currently got an evga 7800GT 256MB that came in my then-new rig 2 years ago that I’m pretty happy with, and I’m not really planning to get Vista anytime soon, so should I bother, or just save my money for a newer rig overall?
I have 3 of them here (usually two in SLi configuration). They are loud on bootup, but quiet down a few seconds later. It looks like they are all set to run the fan at 29% by default, so they are quiet when you are not loading them up. But once you do, they do get hot and loud.
You can have RivaTuner or nTune control that fan speed. Or you could get an aftermarket cooler like the Zalman one. Those work pretty well and make a big difference on the noise.
I personally would ante up for the 8800GTS 512. It’s a two slot setup and it’s much quieter than the 8800GTs. Plus you get the added benefit on a faster card. :)
Edit: I just played around with the fan speeds of one a bit, and I can take the fan to about 55-60% without any big difference in sound over the other fans in this machine here.
I’m loving mine so far. I came from two 7800’s that were originally in SLI mode and eventually I had to split them (I purchased a second monitor and needed dual head.) I now run with a single 8800GT with two monitors and it outperforms what I had in SLI mode with ease. In your case it would be a pretty noticeable difference.
The noise is comparable to what you’ve heard already in your 7800’s, the GT is a smaller card than the full blown GTS/GTX/Ultra cards. It’s supposedly less power draw too. But trust me it is no slouch on performance.
I’ve had only one issue, Pirates of the Burning Sea. I get glitching and lock ups in game unless I run in windowed mode. That’s a known game issue though, and supposedly is being worked on between the devs for that game and Nvidia. Other than that, I’ve not had any game or OS related graphics issues with the card.
If you were looking at a hot new game I would say go for it, otherwise if your 7800’s are getting by for now, hold off for the next gen or further price drops.
evga 8800GT KO here. It’s a fantastic card. No real negatives. Install rivatuner if you want to get crazy with the fan adjustments.
evga even provides official user video bios upgrade files so you can flash it yourself.
I have one (an Nvidia one, I think) inside my new Dell, and it’s hands down the quietest PC I have ever owned.
BFG 8800GT 512MB in my PC and it’s awesome. No problems at all. It’s quieter than the 6800GT I had before it and performance is off the chart by comparison.
I will easily be able to go another year with this Athlon 64 3500+ now that I paired it with an 8800GT.
Ohh… this is an interesting stat I’ve not had much luck finding info on. Your CPU isn’t greatly holding back the card? What res do you typically game at? I’d love to be able to upgrade just my video card without having the replace everything else, but I thought the CPU would pretty much negate the 8800GT.
Edit: It dawns on my that I think you are the person from another thread using the ThermalTake 430w PSU as well… since I think there are multiple kinds of TT PSUs, what is your 12v rating? You’ve basically performed the exact upgrade I’m hoping to do myself (depending on what the new 9800GT card does to things)…
Here are my full specs:
At default clocks I did find my cpu holding me back. Doing the pretty big oc it works quite well with the 8800GT. I can pretty much run everything at my native 1600X1200 (dell 20" 2001fp). I think the video card alone could probably extend the life of my system by another year. The main reason I want to upgrade it is b/c I want to trickle down my current gaming rig to replace my ancient 939 htpc.
I don’t know the 12v rating off the top of my head, but I’ve had zero issues with that powersupply so it must be within the right range.
I run all games at 1280x1024, the native res of my LCD. I don’t really spend any time benchmarking, so I can’t give you specific numbers other than I get a pretty solid 60fps in WoW everywhere but Shattrath, and there I never go below 30. I know that’s not the most graphic intensive game, but it definitely should give you some idea of performance.
STALKER had an order of magnitude increase in performance after the 8800GT, and stuff like The Witcher performs very well, also.
I haven’t tried Crysis, but that’s more because I haven’t really had time or money to do that yet. Call of Duty 4 runs as good or better than the 360 version at that res. Team Fortress 2… I turn on all effects including motion blur and get top framerates. ET: Quake Wars is brilliant looking and smooth.
So yeah, great upgrade.
My 8800GT was a great upgrade. They did change the fans after the initial release to something a little larger to help cut down on the heat and noise. I ended up replacing the stock HSF with an Arctic Cooling Accerlo S1, which was a massive improvement from the stock cooling solution.
Thanks for the info. I’m torn between getting a 20" or a 22" LCD. If I get 22", it is going to of course be 1680x1050, which sounds like it might still struggle a bit with the lower end CPU. But on the flip side, it seems almost a waste to buy a 1440x900 res LCD when the price difference is (depending on the day) fairly small.
Yeah, with the newer displays being bigger, you’ll want to run at a higher resolution and then you will see the processor become more of an issue.
That said, the 8800GT is powerful enough that it will likely last me two years or more. So after a mobo/processor upgrade in like a year, it’s not like I’ll need to replace the 8800GT.
I don’t know if I’ve just been lucky or what, but I’ve been pretty good about getting the right mobo/RAM/video card at the right time that my PCs never feel overpriced at all.
I love the LCD I have, so I don’t see me getting rid of that until it bombs out. If every game I buy runs at 60fps on that display from now until 2010 including that mobo/processor upgrade somewhere along the way, I’m going to continue being very happy with my PC.
If you’re buying one of these stay the fuck away from XFX. Some of their cards have the fan speed permanently set at 100%. Can’t change it with RivaTuner either. It’s like a jet is taking off inside your case. Of course I didn’t know this when I bought mine yesterday and now I’m going to have to drop around $30 on an aftermarket cooler.
Perco: pass one of the fan cables through a variable resistor. Then set that resistor’s value to one that gives you the desired results. Save some cash.
It maybe set that way in the BIOS. If you are the tinkering type, you can look at it with NiBiTor and see what the fan settings are. You can then tweak them, save them out, and then find a copy of NVFlash online and flash the card with the new BIOS. Or you could just find a BIOS from another card online that doesn’t have the same fan problem, and flash the card with that one.
I think this is more a problem with the reference heatsink/fan design by Nvidia that occupies only 1 slot. The 8800 GTS G92 has a two-slot solution with an angled fan that is far quieter.
Naah, the cable that is used to control the fan speed is physically missing. XFX has confirmed that this is a “feature” on many of their 8800GT cards. A variable resistor would work, but I’d still have to manually adjust it to higher speeds when gaming. Not an ideal solution. Anyway, I went and bought an Accelero S1 yesterday and it’s awesome. Surprisingly light for such a massive cooler, too. And even though it’s passive the temps are a few degrees lower than with the original cooler.