Whats best for noise / perfomance - 6800passive or GT w/AS5?

davidstone28 · Post by **davidstone28** » Thu Nov 18, 2004 5:52 am

Have just ordered a Gigabyte 6800 passive graphics card - £220.

But for not much more I can get a BFG 6800 GT stock o'cd to 370/1000 for £280 inc Arctic Silencer 5.

Should I stick with the Gigabyte card or will the GT with Arctic Silencer be okay in terms of noise if I run the fans at 7v? The GT is definitely much more powerful card (very close to Ultra levels of performance and 50%-100% in some ATI HL2 benchmarks) but the thing that concerns me is that it has a alarm/buzzer that rings when GPU temps are too high and I don't know whether it can be disabled:-

The stock cooler on the BFG GT (not Arctic Silencer 5) has heatpipes:-

The BFG GT also seems to run quite hot, so I'm not sure what effect there would be if the stock cooler was replaced by an AS5 and fanmated down to 7v:-

"Some of you are probably wondering how hot the 6800 GT OC runs. Well, when my system was idle and doing no 3D rendering, the GPU core maintained a temperature of about 56C while the ambient temperature was 38C. Load temperatures are of course a bit higher. Immediately after running 3DMark03, the core was reading over 73C, and ambient reached 52C. Therefore, you can figure load temps for the core to be mid to upper 70s Celsius and even lower 80s perhaps. That's one hot tamale!"

I want to be able to play HL2 @ 1280x1024 with max detail but my PC is also on 24/7 so it needs to be quiet. Will the 6800 vanilla be okay for this or do I need the extra power of the GT?

silencery · Post by **silencery** » Thu Nov 18, 2004 11:37 am

I've got the passive gigabyte. Here's what I've managed to achieve thus far:

I currently run HL2 @ 1280x1024 w/ max settings and 4x AA/16x AF. I would estimate that my average framerate is 65fps.

What slows me down though, is my HD which, according to what I've heard, needs to be defragged after the install in order to get a smooth experience. All the load time throughout the stages really detracts from the game.

I enabled all pipelines and run the card at 385/850.

I'm pretty happy w/ the card since it runs my primary game, CS: S, really well. I can get 70+ average w/ all settings on high at 16x12.

As a reference, the Valve VST reports 96 fps for my current setup.

davidstone28 · Post by **davidstone28** » Thu Nov 18, 2004 11:57 am

Those FPS are absolutely fine - excellent in fact. On my Ti4200, the game is jerky and chuggy at 12x10.

What are your CPU/memory specs?

Also what software did you use to unlock the extra pipes? Rivertuner? If not, can you provide a link to the software by any chance?

Cheers.

silencery · Post by **silencery** » Thu Nov 18, 2004 12:19 pm

currently running

-Asus A7N8X
-xp2500 mobile @ 2.4ghz
-1gig kingston ram at CL 2.5

Yeah, rivatuner did the trick for me. Initially had minor artifacting when I unlocked the pipes, but for some reason, after I changed to the new detonators, it solved the problem.

Here's the gallery post for my box:
http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewto ... highlight=

davidstone28 · Post by **davidstone28** » Thu Nov 18, 2004 2:12 pm

Cheers fella. I'll give it a go.

Noizz · Post by **Noizz** » Thu Nov 18, 2004 7:24 pm

i'ld go with the 6800 gt

but for some reason my bfg 6800 GT is not what i expected. maybe its my CPU problem but.....

at 1024x768 no aa, no af i ran those anandtech tests and hardocp tests, im getting around 80 fps? at 1280x1024 i think its around 76 or 70, it doesn't really match up with those results at anandtech and hardocp, the anandtech demo for canals, the 6800GT should be around 100 fps on no aa and trillinear filtering.........im getting like 80..... wth!

where as silencery (up thread) is getting average of 65 with high aa and af.

i think it might be cpu anyone wanna make me feel assured that my computer does not suck?

p4 2.4C OC to 3.0
1G shikatronics ddr 500 on dual channel
BFG 6800 GT OC
samsung 160gig SATA

i don't see any weaknesses except for the CPU, or could it be my CPU is getting old? i've been through alot with that guy.
160gig samsung

silencery · Post by **silencery** » Thu Nov 18, 2004 8:49 pm

have you tried defragging after installing HL2? It helps quite a bit... did for me at least.

You can get some optimizations to improve your performance here: http://tweakguides.com/. I haven't tried them myself though, so I don't know if they work well.

silencery · Post by **silencery** » Thu Nov 18, 2004 8:50 pm

Oh yeah, have you tried other benchmarks? I'm getting about 4000 for 3dMark 05.

frosty · Post by **frosty** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 10:22 am

I think I have 6800 envy!

silencery · Post by **silencery** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 10:52 am

LOL, not trying to make anyone feel bad.

Just be happy when you remember you didn't have to spend almost $300 to get it. I had to save up a LONG time to be able to afford it.

burcakb · Post by **burcakb** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 12:31 pm

Sorry guys,

I really am aware that this is a totally different case and you're truely justified in what you do but the direction the thread took just reminded me of this witty remark by nutball :

Yeah, but that's PC folk for you. You see similar behaviour in benchmarking all the time "OMFG! 193021 GruntMarks??? Shocked D00dZ, your box is teh SuX0r, I get 193025 GruntMarks with the same setup. You need to tweak, and overclock, and align it with the poles of teh compass, and stuff".

silencery · Post by **silencery** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 1:05 pm

lol, I can appreciate that... I realized I've become quite obsessed w/ tweaking.

Noizz · Post by **Noizz** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 10:29 am

yea i defragged and the perforamance skyrocketed lol.

hahahha burcakb lol

i hope my box doesn't suxor

hahahaha