July 2005

7/31/05

Forum Roundup - 7/31/05 @ 10:05 am - By: HalcYoN - Source: You
Weekly update with threads of interest on the nV News Forums...

Hunter32 is interested in the demographics of the nV News Forums by asking What is your occupation?  I always find threads like this interesting.  You can see that the cross-section of people that come together because of gaming hardware is fairly large.  We have mechanics (excuse me Gib, Automotive Technicians), web developers, plenty of students, medical professionals, etc.  Me?  I am a telecom nerd.

Mr. Hunt started a thread about the PSP 2.0 firmware upgrade.  Anyone with a PSP should be interested in this thread as it links several DIYs and FAQs on upgrading and the benefits of doing so.  Despite Sony's insistence this is "not for American PSPs". most are enjoying the new browser and added file type support.

Is Far Cry CPU limited?  PeterJensen says "I think so!" based on a couple of quick benchmarks, but what we find instead is that the control panel of Far Cry does not allow 8xS to be enabled.  The thread is progressing on to discuss the Far Cry Engine and how well it is holding up against the new hardware.

zafarasand wants to discuss the Characters of Quake4.  I expect the Quake4 mania to continue to build as we get closer to release.  I know I am getting geeked up about it.  It is about time to get me GTX!

Speaking of which, I started a thread to highlighting that the price of a 7800GTX is already sub-$500 from the main e-tailers.  The Leadtek 7800GTX is available from ZipZoomFly for $495.  NewEgg stays competitive with the same card for $499.  ZipZoomFLy has retaliated with the eVGA 7800GTX for $499.  Here is a link to the latest results from the nV News PriceGrabber for the 7800GTX. 

Not showing up yet in the search, MSI has released the 7800GTX Lite.  Available for $479 from Newegg, the Lite card forgoes adding the VIVO capabilities.  I have a TV-Tuner card with VIVO, I might as well save myself a few bucks, right?  Update: NewEgg added images to the listing and it appears the Lite edition does have VIVO.  Instead, it appears to have white box OEM packaging which includes the VIVO cables and capability.

See what you have been missing?  Register today.

Edit: One last thread I want to mention, the support thread for the 6.66 nForce4 Forceware drivers shows that several people are having issues with BSODs and locks related to an NCQ or NVRAID incompatibility.  I do know that my system was sent into endless reboots with the 6.66 update.  After salvaging the data on my RAID drives by installing Windows on the back-up, I found the 6.66s when used for the F6 addition of the RAID driver would cause a BSOD at the first reboot in the install process.  I guess I should have known better than to install a driver set with such an auspicious revision number, but I was trying to help a friend troubleshoot an issue by testing on my PC.




Saturday Roundup - 7/30/05 @ 4:08 pm - By: MikeC - Source: Email
Video Card & Display Reviews
CPU, Motherboard, Memory and System Reviews
Case, Power Supply, Cooling, and Mod Reviews
Storage Reviews
Input Device and Accessory Reviews
Game Reviews


GF 7800 GTX Reviews - 7/28/05 @ 8:01 am - By: MUYA - Source: Browsing
Tech Report has a roundup of a few retail GeForce 7800 GTX cards including ones from, XFX, BFG and MSI. Generally the cards perform to each other so, the crunch factor may be the bundles that come with the cards. Check Tech-reports roundup out!

Hot Hardware on the other hand, reviews an EVGA E-GeForce 7800 GTX card. EVGA bundles Battlefield 2 with the card and they have a new BIOS in the works for the card which will increase the default core clock.


4500FX Launched - 7/28/05 @ 7:40 am - By: MUYA - Source: E-mail
NVIDIA today launched the Quadro FX 4500 which, may be the G70 GL. It looks to be a 24 fragment pipelined cored GPU clocked at 450 Mhz apparently paired with 512MB of memory clocked at 1.05GHz memory. Pictures of it began surfacing the web a few few weeks back of which people thought it was the Ultra version of the desktop 7800 GTX. Anywhoo, click on the headline to read the specs on NVIDIA's flagship card. What does the Quadro FX 4500 bring to the table? Click on the headline to read the full press relase.

  • Support for 32x full-scene antialiasing (FSAA) delivering superior image quality
  • Support for up to four dual-link high-resolution displays with a single system
  • Multiple GPUs matched with the NVIDIA Quadro G-Sync option board

3D professor the other hand have further details and nudies of the new Quadros.


Thursday Roundup - 7/28/05 @ 7:36 am - By: MUYA - Source: Various
News and Articles
Video Card & Display Reviews
CPU, Motherboard, Memory and System Reviews
Case, Power Supply, Cooling, and Mod Reviews
Input Device and Accessory Reviews


Wednesday Roundup - 7/27/05 @ 7:21 am - By: MUYA - Source: Various
News and Articles
Video Card & Display Reviews
CPU, Motherboard, Memory and System Reviews
Case, Power Supply, Cooling, and Mod Reviews
Input Device and Accessory Reviews


Gainward GTX - 7/26/05 @ 10:27 am - By: MUYA - Source: PM
NGOHQ reviews a retail Gainward 7800GTX Ultra/3500PCX Golden Sample card. Although it doesn't seem to different from other retail cards except for the red HSF. It is warrantied to clock at 480MHz core and 1.3GHz by Gainward. Does extra MHz in the clocks offer any performance benefits? Click on the headline to read the review.


BFG 7800GTX OC - 7/26/05 @ 8:41 am - By: MUYA - Source:
B3D reviews a BFG Tech 7800 GTX OC. Slightly overclocked over NVIDIA recomended core clock, B3D dishes a few demanding FPS games at the card at high resolutions and IQ settings. Click on the headline to read the review.


Tuesday Roundup - 7/26/05 @ 8:35 am - By: MUYA - Source: Various
News and Articles
Video Card & Display Reviews
CPU, Motherboard, Memory and System Reviews
Case, Power Supply, Cooling, and Mod Reviews
Storage Reviews
Audio, Multimedia and Digital Player Reviews
Input Device and Accessory Reviews


7800GTX Review - 7/25/05 @ 5:56 pm - By: MikeC - Source: Forums
Ratchet over at Rage3D has reviewed NVIDIA's 7800GTX.

Well that's it, the first NVIDIA review on Rage3D and the first time I've ever gone hands-on with a top-end Geforce.

What do I think of it? Clearly the performance is nothing short of amazing. I can't believe that at 2048x1536 with 4xAA the card can still pull along nicely, even with the newest game engines (and in a nod to playability at that level of detail, my CS:Source profile is now set to 2048x1536/4xAA/16xAF details max). And this is with a single card too; I can't imagine how crazy fast things would be with an SLI setup.


MSI 7800 GTX - 7/25/05 @ 7:41 am - By: MUYA - Source: Browsing
Anandtech has a MSI NX7800 GTX (VT2D256E) to play around with as retail cards pop into many a hardware labs for review. The MSI doesn't as is the case with many other 7800GTX cards, vary from reference design from NVIDIA. Seems the MSI overclocks quite well at 480+MHz on the core. Click on the headline to read the review.


Monday Roundup - 7/25/05 @ 7:24 am - By: MUYA - Source: Various
News and Articles
Video Card & Display Reviews
CPU, Motherboard, Memory and System Reviews
Case, Power Supply, Cooling, and Mod Reviews


Forum Update - 7/23/05 @ 4:43 pm - By: HalcYoN - Source: You
Threads of interest...

Looking for help with the ladies?  SH64 has posted a rather extensive list of Geek pick up lines. * Is that Shai-Hulud, the life-giving spice-producing god-worm in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?"

The SLI Antialiasing Preview continues to be updated by ChrisRay as members ask more questions.  There seems to be a common misconception that the SLI AA mode is designed for enhanced AA performance.  Nope, just image quality.

macatak started a thread about the Crossfire Benchmarks at Anand Tech.  The consensus seems to be not bad, but maybe too late.  The single 7800GTX is still nearly as quick in most benchmarks, so does the expense of a Crossfire Master card and motherboard make sense versus upgrading to a 7800GTX?  Answer please...

wheeljack12 prompted a conversation about SATA specs and standards in his For you SATA II 3gb users out there thread where he links to specs of the new Western Digital's with 16MB buffers.

In other hard drive tech support news, The Boatman asked how to rename a drive letter under Windows.  nrs421 promptly replied with the DIY fix.  Others also replied with tips to prevent it from happening during you next Windows install.

Last week, MUYA needed your help, this week, it is OWA.  System Troubleshooting Help Needed (lots of data, very few answers), the system sports 7800GTXs in SLI, and A64 X2 4800++ and an Asus A8N-SLI Premium.  His issues, system locks mainly, are seemingly remedied by underclocking.  BIOS? Power? Chipset?  Help OWA get up a running at the full 2.4GHz of dual core glory that I am lucky to experience every time I fire up my system.

Side note on Dual-Core: I did some quick testing last night a small LAN party and ran the X2 4800+ hard to show Dual-Core in all its glory.  Clean run, nothing else but normal system tasks running, windowed Q3A at 10x7 with 4x/8x ran through at 90.1 fps.  I then started ripping a CD, running a virus scan, all while watching a downloaded video of the Fifth Gear E90 M5 review.  The performance "dropped" to 86.7 fps.  How cool is that?

And finally today, LBJM asks When did you get Your first AMD system?  Mine was a Duron 700 OC'ed to 1000 on an Abit KT7-A.  Good times...


A64 X2 4800+ Review - 7/23/05 @ 3:48 pm - By: HalcYoN - Source: Email
Austrian Hardware site, Origo3D, has posted their review of the Athlon64 X2 4800+, featuring benchmarks with the XFX GeForce 7800GTX.  The review is in German, so here is a link translated by Google.

Heute haben wir einen Bericht der Extraklasse für euch vorbereitet. Wir haben uns den Athlon 64 X2 4800+ angesehen, den ersten Dual Core Prozessor für Desktops. Erst vor wenigen Wochen wurden die neuen Modelle vorgestellt und auch Intel hat einen erfolgreichen Launch ihrer Dual Core Serie hinter sich. Da sind die Interessen an solchen Prozessoren immer groß. Die Promotion vor dem Launch lässt die Leute vor Neugier platzen. Umso größer ist dann die Freude, wenn die ersten Leistungsdaten im Netz erscheinen. So war es auch für uns.


7800GTX on Linux - 7/23/05 @ 3:40 pm - By: HalcYoN - Source: Email
Phoronix decided to let the penguin meet the fastest video card available to the public.  Unfortunately, driver bugs have hampered the off-the-shelf performance of the latest flagship offering, perhaps a vitim of the hard-launch deadlines.

We have now confirmed that the majority of the performance problem is indeed related to the 2D/3D switch. After tampering with nvidia-settings and the NVClock CVS for several hours, we have concluded that with the 1.0-7667 drivers once a 3D application launches that the system continues to stick to the 2D frequencies rather than their respective 3D speeds. Thus during game-play the VPU is currently running roughly 275MHz (VPU) and 1200MHz (MEM) at 1.2V rather than the 3D performance level of 430MHz (VPU) and 1200MHz (MEM) at 1.4V. We attempted to correct this problem by overclocking the 2D and also 3D speeds using CoolBits and the NVClock CVS, and taking other such steps, but so far we haven't achieved success. We can only hope right now that this is indeed the only factor causing the poor performance and that NVIDIA developers will be able to address this problem in a timely manner. Once we have access to any newer drivers or a fix we will be publishing new benchmark results for the 7800GTX.

We will keep you posted on the latest in Linux driver support and be sure to post your experiences with the 7800GTX in the NVIDIA Linux Forum.


ECS KN1 Extreme - 7/23/05 @ 3:31 pm - By: HalcYoN - Source:
The latest site to review a board from ECS' KN1 Extreme line is futurelooks.  This time, it is the ECS KN1 Extreme nForce4 Ultra.  Available for around $100 from the major e-tailers, ECS again brings down the price of a performance oriented motherboard.

Overall, the KN1 is a well-rounded motherboard with an excellent layout involving colour coding and clear labeling, large support for hard drives, USB ports, and a nice software bundle. There are just plenty of options for upgrading. Keeping in mind the relatively inexpensive nature of the board, the KN1 is really a great deal especially when compared to relatively bland offerings like the ASUS A8N-E ($1


 Visitors Are Online
Powered by Perlonline.com