What happened to differing heatsinks among companies?

[hans030390]

This is really a random question:

What happened to separate companies making their own heatsinks for video card as opposed to sticking with the reference heatsink?

Look at the 6600gt cards...there a many many different companies using their own heatsink designs on the cards.

But look at the 7800/7900 and x1800/1900 series, and it seems like all of these companies have decided to go with the reference cooler.

One reason I bought a leadtek 6600gt was because of its great heatsink design.

And now it seems like its really hard to find and variety.

What happened?

 

[JBT]

most of them always start out with reference coolers then slowly change to using their own style.

 

[hans030390]

Originally posted by: JBT
most of them always start out with reference coolers then slowly change to using their own style.

I haven't seen many different heatsink designs from anyone lately, even with the given time they've had with the cards.

 

[Demoth]

What's possibly happening is these companies saw most buyers are simply buying the cheapest card offered which would be those having referance coolers. Many OCers want to use their own cooling, either high quality air or water and many gamers won't overclock or don't know the difference better cooling makes, just a faster OCed factory card will be faster is about all most buyers are aware of. They pay nothing staying with referance, but trying to stay competetive after adding on possibly $20 for each cooling bundle bought in bulk would be difficult unless it was a heavily OCed card with good word of mouth.

Hopefully, now that ATI is allowing partners to OC their cards, we will see much quieter X1800XT and X1900XT offerings with some factory OC.

 

[BassBomb]

will take at least a month for new heatsinks , longer for ati

just look at those cards with zalmanns slapped on, or those asus with their crazy passive design, asus with the NV silencer (HIS in ati doing same thing)

 

[openwheelformula1]

they just came out guys. give it a little time before each manufacturer make their own. I've already seen them at Cebit.

 

[Hauk]

Sucks, I agree. Look at the 7900GT offerings.

Lots of reasons we're seeing this trend. My conspiracy theory... they're sticking with single slot reference designs to entice you in to buying two cards. I've heard about something called SLI that's supposed to be all the rage...

 

[hans030390]

Originally posted by: openwheelformula1
they just came out guys. give it a little time before each manufacturer make their own. I've already seen them at Cebit.

The 7800 series has been around for a few months, and most companies still used the reference coolers. I know some companies used different ones, but its no where near as diverse or widely available as it used to be (specifically all the 6600gt cards)

 

[BassBomb]

cheaper cards means cheaper coolers, means companies can try out other stuff, it doesnt happen as much with the 7 series as it did with the 6

 

[1Dark1Sharigan1]

The cost-cutting is especially true for the 7600, 7900 series . . .