- Feb 14, 2005
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This is not about performance, just some notes on installing and using the X1900. My previous card was a X800 bought in the winter of '04. But rather than making another epenis contest, I just decided to write down some thoughts on this new card and any usage issues I might have come upon. My system is a A64 3000+ overclocked, an Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe mobo, 2GB of RAM, OCZ 520w Modstream PSU. Case is an Antec P160 windowed with a front and rear 120mm fan.
Below was from another thread. Making a new thread rather than have this buried under different discussions.
Well. I've installed the X1900XT. Idle with 22C ambient room temp, my X1900XT idles at about 60C. The highest temp I saw after 2 hours of RTHDRIBL was 80C. Ok, I meant to only run it half an hour but I dozed off. Very hot, definitely should look into some better cooling later on, for now it's fine.
Sitting at normal gaming distance, I can barely hear the X1900XT at idle over the normal computer fan noise. At load I definitely noticed the X1900's fan going but nothing near as annoying as when you first boot up the computer. In fact, I've sat next to computers with more fan noise than this and with lower end video cards. I have two 120mm fans in my case and the Modstream 520w PSU so my computer was relatively quiet in the first place.
Sitting next to my brother's computer at roughly the same distance, his stock 7900GT is roughly on par with my x1900. Make no mistake the X1900XT is audible when at load. I was listening to it without any sound running through my speakers while running RTHDRIBL and you could tell when it comes on. The whirring is in the high pitched side but for me, it comes in a little bit under the annoying level. So basically I wish it was quieter but it's not that annoying. However, I have to question how much one would hear it or even notice it while it's running and one has speakers going full blast, or a decent set of headphones during the night when you don't want to wake up anyone else in the house. Only had a quick run in COD2, basically played the beginning to the level where you fix the broken wires. Didn't notice the X1900XT's fan. Was too busy playing. If the fan ran like it does when your computer boots up then we got a problem.
Have held off playing Oblivion until now. Will install it later and see how bad the noise is or if I even notice it while playing a brand new game. Will play with low volume coming out of the speakers initially to guage how badly the fan noise gets on the X1900XT.
One issue I did note. This thing is power hungry to the extreme. I have an overclocked CPU runs at 2.43ghz at 1.45v and a bump in speed to XTX speeds, this thing really sucked up the power. I tried to max out my system a bit by running RTHDRIBL and encoding a DVD to divx at the same time, my 12v rail dropped to 11.52. Didn't use a multimeter but relied on Asusprobe. It's still within spec as ATX power supplies allow for a 5% variance but I don't think the PSU is going to tolerate SLI or Crossfire systems with this much power draw. Wonder if the PSU will choke when I upgrade to a dual core (next planned upgrade) and overclock that.
Below was from another thread. Making a new thread rather than have this buried under different discussions.
Well. I've installed the X1900XT. Idle with 22C ambient room temp, my X1900XT idles at about 60C. The highest temp I saw after 2 hours of RTHDRIBL was 80C. Ok, I meant to only run it half an hour but I dozed off. Very hot, definitely should look into some better cooling later on, for now it's fine.
Sitting at normal gaming distance, I can barely hear the X1900XT at idle over the normal computer fan noise. At load I definitely noticed the X1900's fan going but nothing near as annoying as when you first boot up the computer. In fact, I've sat next to computers with more fan noise than this and with lower end video cards. I have two 120mm fans in my case and the Modstream 520w PSU so my computer was relatively quiet in the first place.
Sitting next to my brother's computer at roughly the same distance, his stock 7900GT is roughly on par with my x1900. Make no mistake the X1900XT is audible when at load. I was listening to it without any sound running through my speakers while running RTHDRIBL and you could tell when it comes on. The whirring is in the high pitched side but for me, it comes in a little bit under the annoying level. So basically I wish it was quieter but it's not that annoying. However, I have to question how much one would hear it or even notice it while it's running and one has speakers going full blast, or a decent set of headphones during the night when you don't want to wake up anyone else in the house. Only had a quick run in COD2, basically played the beginning to the level where you fix the broken wires. Didn't notice the X1900XT's fan. Was too busy playing. If the fan ran like it does when your computer boots up then we got a problem.
Have held off playing Oblivion until now. Will install it later and see how bad the noise is or if I even notice it while playing a brand new game. Will play with low volume coming out of the speakers initially to guage how badly the fan noise gets on the X1900XT.
One issue I did note. This thing is power hungry to the extreme. I have an overclocked CPU runs at 2.43ghz at 1.45v and a bump in speed to XTX speeds, this thing really sucked up the power. I tried to max out my system a bit by running RTHDRIBL and encoding a DVD to divx at the same time, my 12v rail dropped to 11.52. Didn't use a multimeter but relied on Asusprobe. It's still within spec as ATX power supplies allow for a 5% variance but I don't think the PSU is going to tolerate SLI or Crossfire systems with this much power draw. Wonder if the PSU will choke when I upgrade to a dual core (next planned upgrade) and overclock that.
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