Just upgraded to 7900GT from X800XL. Holy crap is CS:Source UGLY!

[BFG10K]

okay turning the LOD option back on seems to help a bit

If it made a difference then you are not running under High Quality as High Quality automatically clamps the LOD.

Good thing I'm more interested in playing the game than the visuals or I'd regret this and rather put up with the noise of ax X1800/X1900 style card.

A 7900GT is louder than either of those cards, especially when idle. The 7900GT probably has the worst cooler currently in existance.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

okay turning the LOD option back on seems to help a bit

If it made a difference then you are not running under High Quality as High Quality automatically clamps the LOD.

Good thing I'm more interested in playing the game than the visuals or I'd regret this and rather put up with the noise of ax X1800/X1900 style card.

A 7900GT is louder than either of those cards, especially when idle. The 7900GT probably has the worst cooler currently in existance.

That's not the general concensus around here. You still have that passive 7800GT? Or have you moved to something else?

 

[LOUISSSSS]

what resolution are you playing at? if at 1280x1024, just turn everything up except vsync(off).. at least i'd HOPE the 7900gt can play source at max settings...
if at 1680x1050 or 1680x1200 turn everything to medium.. if those settings don't work revert to default and try again or reinstall drivers, maybe u didn't do a good uninstall of the ati drivers

 

[sisq0kidd]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

okay turning the LOD option back on seems to help a bit

If it made a difference then you are not running under High Quality as High Quality automatically clamps the LOD.

Good thing I'm more interested in playing the game than the visuals or I'd regret this and rather put up with the noise of ax X1800/X1900 style card.

A 7900GT is louder than either of those cards, especially when idle. The 7900GT probably has the worst cooler currently in existance.

I've had an x1800xt 512mb, x1900 AIW, evga 7900gt and from my own experience, the 7900gt has the least noise. x1800xt is by far the worst offender.

 

[schneiderguy]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
A 7900GT is louder than either of those cards, especially when idle. The 7900GT probably has the worst cooler currently in existance.

my 7600gt (same cooler as 7900gt) is way quieter than my friends x1900xt

 

[josh6079]

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003

Originally posted by: BFG10K

okay turning the LOD option back on seems to help a bit

If it made a difference then you are not running under High Quality as High Quality automatically clamps the LOD.

Good thing I'm more interested in playing the game than the visuals or I'd regret this and rather put up with the noise of ax X1800/X1900 style card.

A 7900GT is louder than either of those cards, especially when idle. The 7900GT probably has the worst cooler currently in existance.

That's not the general concensus around here. You still have that passive 7800GT? Or have you moved to something else?

TMK, he has the 7900GTX. The 7800GT's I had were louder at idle than my X1900XTX was at idle. Load is a different story. Nevertheless, most stock cooling devices suckass.

 

[sisq0kidd]

Originally posted by: josh6079

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003

Originally posted by: BFG10K

okay turning the LOD option back on seems to help a bit

If it made a difference then you are not running under High Quality as High Quality automatically clamps the LOD.

Good thing I'm more interested in playing the game than the visuals or I'd regret this and rather put up with the noise of ax X1800/X1900 style card.

A 7900GT is louder than either of those cards, especially when idle. The 7900GT probably has the worst cooler currently in existance.

That's not the general concensus around here. You still have that passive 7800GT? Or have you moved to something else?

TMK, he has the 7900GTX. The 7800GT's I had were louder at idle than my X1900XTX was at idle. Load is a different story. Nevertheless, most stock cooling devices suckass.

I think the 7800gt I had was the only quiet card with adequate stock cooling. The rest of the cards (7900gt, x1800, x1900) had a faint wining noise at idle and the x1800/x1900 series sounded horrific at load.

The 7900gt cooling looks so dinky, it reminds me of the 9800 pro days.

The x1800/1900 cooling needs to be desperately thrown away and never to be used again. I'm glad they changed it with those leaked x1950 pics.

 

[josh6079]

The x1800/1900 cooling needs to be desperately thrown away and never to be used again. I'm glad they changed it with those leaked x1950 pics.

The cooling they gave wasn't bad, just the sound that seemed to fight the volume I'd crank up to try and drown it. We'll see how those X1950's do. They look promising, but who knows.

 

[yacoub]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

A 7900GT is louder than either of those cards, especially when idle. The 7900GT probably has the worst cooler currently in existance.

Well the cooler on the 7900GT KO model by eVGA I can happily report is not too loud at all. It is a bit different than the reference design, as it is copper and covers the RAM chips, so the fan might be different as well.

Also, there seems to be a lot of FUD about "you did a poor job installing the drivers". No, either they're installed or they aren't, there is no inbetween, especially when I did it properly, which means 'including using Driver Cleaner to make sure the ATI drivers were all gone' .
No, the drivers are installed just fine, it's finding the right settings to get the graphics back up to par with how ATI's were without any fiddling. I believe I have finally achieved it (or as close as possible) however. Will test further tonight.

 

[Ulfhednar]

You've just discovered how much better ATI image quality is. I too discovered this earlier this year, and haven't gone back. Unfortunately, there's not much you can do about it, it's just a universal constant.

Until Nvidia improve their image quality, they lose me as a customer.

 

[Gstanfor]

What on earth are you doing, running the poor card in High Performance mode or something?

I've found that the 7900 series is better (to my eyes) than GF6 series when set to Quality mode, however, it's noticeably worse when set to Performance or High Performance (downright ugly in fact where on GF6 you would commonly get mipmap transition rings in these modes).

A couple of hints.

Go through your profiles and enable the LOD clamp for all of them. You never want this setting off. I like to specify Texture LOD of 0.0 with enhancer in all profiles too in case of shenanigans.

 

[Nightmare225]

Originally posted by: LOUISSSSS
what resolution are you playing at? if at 1280x1024, just turn everything up except vsync(off).. at least i'd HOPE the 7900gt can play source at max settings...
if at 1680x1050 or 1680x1200 turn everything to medium.. if those settings don't work revert to default and try again or reinstall drivers, maybe u didn't do a good uninstall of the ati drivers

You can max source in all 7900 series graphics cards...

 

[yacoub]

Originally posted by: Gstanfor
What on earth are you doing, running the poor card in High Performance mode or something?

I've found that the 7900 series is better (to my eyes) than GF6 series when set to Quality mode, however, it's noticeably worse when set to Performance or High Performance (downright ugly in fact where on GF6 you would commonly get mipmap transition rings in these modes).

A couple of hints.

Go through your profiles and enable the LOD clamp for all of them. You never want this setting off. I like to specify Texture LOD of 0.0 with enhancer in all profiles too in case of shenanigans.

It's running in High Quality mode.

I am running full 1680x1050.

I will check the individual game profiles (there are a ton of them so I'll start with the one for CS:Source or HL2 if it has one) and make sure the LOD clamp thing is enabled.

 

[yacoub]

Originally posted by: Ulfhednar
You've just discovered how much better ATI image quality is. I too discovered this earlier this year, and haven't gone back. Unfortunately, there's not much you can do about it, it's just a universal constant.

Until Nvidia improve their image quality, they lose me as a customer.

I think this is the bottom line, although I think NVidia has added a bunch of options you need to know enough to know which to enable to get it to look closer to ATI's image quality. I think it's possible it just takes some tweaking where as ATI looked good out of the box.

 

[Ackmed]

Some tweaking to get closer, not to match it. NV cant match quality to ATi, to me. At least not right now.

 

[BFG10K]

That's not the general concensus around here.

The general consensus simply perpetuates the myth.

Click 1.
Click 2.

Any website that runs such tests consistently confirms the 7900GT's reference cooler is attrocious. Deviation from the reference version may certainly be quieter but the stock cooler is horrific.

I've had an x1800xt 512mb, x1900 AIW, evga 7900gt and from my own experience, the 7900gt has the least noise. x1800xt is by far the worst offender.

Not according to multiple dB readings on the web so you'll forgive me if I take hard measurements over anecdotal evidence.

It is a bit different than the reference design, as it is copper and covers the RAM chips, so the fan might be different as well.

I'd say it would be different to the reference version.

 

[Gstanfor]

The cooler on my 7900GT is the quietest non passive graphics card cooler I've ever heard, an I came from a Leadtek 6800GT, equipped with a cooler famous for its lack of noise compared to other solutions.

The only real differences I see compared to the stock cooler are a copper base and a dual high fan. The actual fan itself is the same size as the reference fans.

Besides replacing the stock fan gives the inverterate tweakers among us something they can 'improve' without too much risk of damage

 

[Sc4freak]

Originally posted by: yacoub

Originally posted by: Ulfhednar
You've just discovered how much better ATI image quality is. I too discovered this earlier this year, and haven't gone back. Unfortunately, there's not much you can do about it, it's just a universal constant.

Until Nvidia improve their image quality, they lose me as a customer.

I think this is the bottom line, although I think NVidia has added a bunch of options you need to know enough to know which to enable to get it to look closer to ATI's image quality. I think it's possible it just takes some tweaking where as ATI looked good out of the box.

Not to mention Nvidia's "High Quality" driver mode incurs a good 10-15% performance hit from the default "Quality" setting.

 

[Ackmed]

7900GT quietest non passive cooler you've ever heard? Oh my... Its so far down on the list of fans Ive used, its not even close. I guess 50db is quiet to you. :shrug:

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: Ulfhednar
You've just discovered how much better ATI image quality is. I too discovered this earlier this year, and haven't gone back. Unfortunately, there's not much you can do about it, it's just a universal constant.

Until Nvidia improve their image quality, they lose me as a customer.

Ah, so you weren't really looking to get a GX2 then?

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: Ackmed
7900GT quietest non passive cooler you've ever heard? Oh my... Its so far down on the list of fans Ive used, its not even close. I guess 50db is quiet to you. :shrug:

That 7900GT reference cooler is definitely too small for that card, or at least the fan diameter is too small. I can see that being loud. But it no way shape or form does this suddenly make X1800/1900 coolers quiet. I know you didn't say this. Just needed saying.

 

[Ackmed]

It didnt need saying, you just wanted to throw it in there, to try and put them down. The 7900GT is far from quiet, just as the X1900's are. Saying the 7900GT cooler is the "quietest non passive cooler I've ever heard", is far, far from the truth to me. Everyone has an opinion, I just cant imagine how anyone would think that. Years ago, there have been much smaller, and quieter fans on video cards. Heck, the 7900GTX is a much quieter solution. Perhaps he hasnt heard one, or any other card quieter than 50db...

 

[Ulfhednar]

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003

Originally posted by: Ulfhednar
You've just discovered how much better ATI image quality is. I too discovered this earlier this year, and haven't gone back. Unfortunately, there's not much you can do about it, it's just a universal constant.
Until Nvidia improve their image quality, they lose me as a customer.

Ah, so you weren't really looking to get a GX2 then?

Yes, I was really looking into getting a 7950GX2, but I have decided against it for a few reasons. Firstly I would definitely need a new PSU as my Akasa 460w probably won't keep up, secondly Nvidia have inferior image quality to ATI at the moment, and finally I would probably need a new motherboard too (but I will be upgrading it soon anyway to go Conroe or to take advantage of the AMD price cuts, depending on my budget.)

My current plan is to see how R600 and G80 are and buy the best of those. So far I am leaning toward R600 due to unified shader architecture though, but who knows, Nvidia might pull something out of their hats. Either way, if Nvidia IQ still sucks in the next generation they lose.

 

[Gstanfor]

Originally posted by: Ackmed
7900GT quietest non passive cooler you've ever heard? Oh my... Its so far down on the list of fans Ive used, its not even close. I guess 50db is quiet to you. :shrug:

Perhaps you didn't read the second paragraph...

The only real differences I see compared to the stock cooler are a copper base and a dual high fan. The actual fan itself is the same size as the reference fans.

The only other 7900GT fan I've heard was on a Leadtek card - it was a little louder, but far from horrendous - certainly nothing like the Airbus turbine engine strapped to the X1800/x1900 series... I'm sure lesser brands of 7900GT will have noisier coolers.

Perhaps he hasnt heard one, or any other card quieter than 50db...

perhaps you missed the part where I said I owned (still do) a Leadtek 6800Gt - the fan on those is rated at <30db you fanatic fuckwit!

Dual height heatsink
Copper base

 

[Elfear]

Originally posted by: Gstanfor


perhaps you missed the part where I said I owned (still do) a Leadtek 6800Gt - the fan on those is rated at <30db you fanatic fuckwit!

Whoa. You need to chill out man. It's just a forum and we're just talking about video cards here. He didn't insult your mom or your girlfriend so breathe easy and watch your language (it's actually against forum rules).