Finally got a "new" videocard

[biostud]

I've been looking for a new card for some time now, and now I've gotten one for my ~3 yo computer. I was looking at 4850 ($240) or 8800GT ($210) (Danish prices), but then I found a guy selling his Zotac 8800GT for $120, living closer than a mile from me, and I pulled the trigger. Since it will be running on my X2-3800@2.5Ghz (WinXP), I guessed that going for a faster videocard was not worth it.

I dismantled the card and hooked on my old GPU block without dismantling the watercooling setup. I started the computer and it worked, no problems, WOHOO!!

The Zotac runs 660/1800 as default and the idle temp is around 40C. I haven't had time to test it yet, but I'm looking forward do some stress test and o/c. I will post more once I get to run some tests.

 

[FalseChristian]

See if you can get another one for some SLI madness and you'll have 2 GPUs that beat a single GeForce GTX 280 in most instances.

 

[betasub]

Always nice to see some results on a water-cooled GPU - please keep us posted!

What sort of cooling does the vRAM get?

 

[themisfit610]

Yeah... /me is slapping himself for not getting an SLI board this time around.

I'd always done it in the past, but this time I listened to folks who said SLI is never an upgrade path.

Adding a second 8800gt (nearly one year later) for under $200 and beating the current uber card in most benchies is a nice f*%$ing upgrade path.

-Derek

 

[biostud]

So I've been playing som 3dmark06 to find a stable o/c and I've settled on 710/1718/1840 and I got a 3Dmark06 score of 8567. The memory is passively cooled with ramsinks, so I didn't want to push them too much.
There's three reasons why SLI isn't going to happen on my computer:
1. cost
2. CPU speed
3. the water GPU block doesn't leave room for another card.

The computer has been on all day and the ambient/idle core temp was 41C and the load temp was 47C so a delta of 6 is quite nice.

 

[biostud]

I tried to convert a mpeg2 recording ~2.5Gb 62mins to a 320x240 video for the ipod nano. Using ipodrobot videoconvert (CPU) I got around 100fps and 14-15 mins to convert and using badaboom (I got around 190fps an 8.23 mins) same bitrate settings.

 

[themisfit610]

Compare the quality

Badaboom is absolutely dreadful.


I don't know which encoder ipodrobot uses, but the best out there is undoubtedly x264.

~MiSfit

 

[biostud]

Originally posted by: themisfit610
Compare the quality

Badaboom is absolutely dreadful.


I don't know which encoder ipodrobot uses, but the best out there is undoubtedly x264.

~MiSfit

It doesn't matter that much when it's 320x240, and hopefully badaboom will be better quality once it comes out of beta stage.

 

[lyssword]

I recently ordered 3850 512 for $70. Upgrading from x800xl, on 2160@2.6 should be enough for my 16x12 monitor