Rogue Keeper on 22/10/2008 at 08:44
Not as much a request for help, just wanted to let you know I upgraded my GPU from 7600GT to 7950GT 512MB. MSI model for almost bargain price. I'm excited. :cheeky: I don't play too many demanding games, but when I do once-twice in a year, I don't want to be desilusioned by clumsy performance and spend a lot of time with advanced tweaking in the guts of CFG files.
To someone this may seem to be too small leap for an upgrade and may wonder why I didn't go for 8 or 9 series. Several reasons. Even midrange cards of newer generations are more power demanding and my Athlon 3000, 2GB RAM, 400W system would be not a suitable partner for them. I'm not interested in Vista and DX10 features which new games come with don't impress me much. Of course this will be the last (second) GPU upgrade for my current rig. I can have late 2006 high-end quite cheaply and I bet it will reliably process those few new games I'm interested in, in next two years.
I didn't test it in my 3DMark05 yet, but I presume it will make about 8-9k points.
Now I'm prepared for Fallout 3. Cmon babe, show me your best.
Did anybody have any interesting experiences with 7950GTs, particularly with (
http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?func=proddesc&maincat_no=130&cat2_no=136&prod_no=1045) this model?
Judith on 22/10/2008 at 09:44
Quote Posted by BR796164
Now I'm prepared for Fallout 3. Cmon babe, show me your best.
I'm afraid you're not, Oblivion's performance wasn't too great on my GF 7900 GT (at least with everything set on high) GT, and I expect F3 to have a bit higher requirements. The difference is, I decided to switch to GF 9800 GTX.
Rogue Keeper on 22/10/2008 at 10:10
Oblivion on mid-high settings was decently playable in 1152x864, max textures and HDR on my 7600GT 256MB. Stalker on similar settings as well. Not really smooth, just decently playable - for me it means FPS in range 16-35 with average of about 24. With 256bit interface I expect considerable boost.
If there was a game which brought 7600GT into serious trouble, it was Bioshock in it's intense moments.
Anyway, I will test it in next few days a bit and post my impressions. However, perhaps I have put the 3DMark05 estimates too high, upon furter research I came to conclusion I can't expect more than 8000 on my configuration.
Huckeye on 22/10/2008 at 13:37
I actually thought the power supply might be the problem. 400W is not much when gaming with higher end graphics cards. Keep an eye on extra components you might add.
bikerdude on 22/10/2008 at 13:54
Hi BR796
Im sorry to say that the model of 7950 card you have got isnt going to run FallOut3 all that well - you will have to drop the res down to 1024*768 and have all settings on low to medium.
Also that model is passively cooled so will get VERY hot... if you are able to, send it back and let me find a card for you(whats your budget) - Where did you buy it from and how much did it cost..?
biker
Rogue Keeper on 22/10/2008 at 14:19
Thanks for input folks.
Huckeye : Well, manufacturer says on the box that 400W is minimum, but so it was for 7600GT. I have 3 HDD drives (80+80+20) and 2 optical drives. The guy from who I bought it says he has too 400W, 3 HDD drives and 2 optical drives, moreover a dual core CPU and the system worked reliably. So if his newer system worked without problem, I presume mine should too...
Bikerdude: Of course you're right that it won't run F3 perfectly on max (Beth recommends 8800), especially with the CPU I have, but certainly better than 7600GT. I will be satisfied with mid settings at 1024x768, but I will certainly try to push for more. 512MB should be enough for high quality textures (since F3 is multiplatform I don't expect the textures to be extremely demanding?).
I bought it from a relative of mine for 80 Euro, the card is in very good condition. Heatpipe cooler may look weak for this type of GPU, but apparently it is enough - like I mentioned the guy had it for year and half and it worked reliably. You could notice on the reference picture that the memory chips aren't covered by heatsink, but my card has a small passive heatsink on every separate memory chip.
Overclocking attempts would of course ask for additional fan, but I have no such ambitions, 7950GT already is a factory overclocked 7900GT and the overclocking attempts I read about in reviews aren't convincing. I have a big 80mm fan on side of the PC case, so I can turn it on if I'll play something demanding or during summer. Also I can use a little trick to save few watts - I can underclock it a bit when I'll have off-gaming period.
Thanks for your kind offer though, Biker. I shall put it in this evening, test it thoroughly and I tell you how it actually behaves.
Judith on 22/10/2008 at 19:29
Quote:
since F3 is multiplatform I don't expect the textures to be extremely demanding?
Texture memory isn't such a problem, really. When your card has run out of texture memory, system uses RAM for that. If it's busy too it tries the virtual memory (HDD pagefile). Of course it leads to a slight performance drop, but it's nothing really significant.
Rogue Keeper on 23/10/2008 at 10:16
It is relatively common that games which go also to consoles tend to have lower res textures. For example Oblivion's maximum textures were more compressed at close look than Stalker's maximum textures. And since F3 is based on Oblivion engine I presume maximum textures will have similar quality of Oblivion's, that's of course purely theoretical predictament... I shall realize soon how it is.
***
Anyway, I tested the card yesterday in 3DMark 05 :
GPU Game Test @ 1024x768 : 8272
GPU Game Test @ 1280x1024, 4xAA, 16xAF: 6498
GPU+CPU Complete Test @ 1024x768 : 8165
GPU+CPU Complete Test @ 1280x1024, 4xAA, 16xAF: 6474
What isn't really bad for the rest of configuration. But now onto the worse things:
Biker, you were right about that heatpipe cooler. In peace the card had about 80C. Not pleasant, really. But I wanted to put it under stress test.
I have tested the card with Stalker. Maxed everything out, no AA (doesn't work in Stalker with nVidias anyway), 4x AF, vSync On : 20-45 FPS. And it was running nicely for about 5 minutes. Then all of a sudden FPS started to drop to like 5-10 FPS for a moment, then back to normal performance, then again sudden drop. The system played warning sound notifying about Critical Core Temperature of 125C. Bad Bad Bad.
At least the system didn't crash - 400W is obviously enough even for this monster, but the heatsink doesn't cope with the generated heat.
Therefore I have experimented with underclocking. Original clocks are 550/700. I have set the 2D performance to 350/600. It made the card cooler by 10 degrees C to actual 65-70. Better, but still not satisfying. I have set the 3D clocks to values grossly similar to standard 7900GT's : 450/600.
With this I repeated testing in Stalker with the same setings. 19-35 FPS, average 25. Still decently playable. And the card's temperature was raising slower than before, nevertheless, it reached critical temp in about 10 minutes. Bad.
The 80mm fan on the side of the case is not much of help because it's above the card and blows directly into the CPU which doesn't really need it.
I wonder how a card with heatsink solution like this could have passed stress tests in the factory...
Anyway I asked the dude who sold it to me about his temperatures, he said he had always a fan on the bottom of the case which was cooling the card, but he didn't really play much, he used the card for video grabbing and edition - no wonder he didnt have overheating problems!
He also suggested he can swap me the card for his actual 7900GT with active cooler, for a lower price. The card can be overclocked to 7950GT with ease, so I can experiment a bit. The downer is that it has only 256MB instead of 512MB but I guess it's an acceptable compromise. I don't play at HD resolutions and less memory naturally emits less heat.
It's either this card swap or I can start looking for active Zalman for the 7950GT. And I'm not happy with that quest, because I don't have much space left in the case. Really good cooling solutions for high end cards like ARCTIC COOLING Accelero S1 take a lot of space under the card and I have SoundBlaster down there in PCI slot. Also the omnipresent cables are getting in way of the air flows no matter where I put them...
So I guess I go with 7950 -> 7900 swap. I have tested 7900 clocks already and they were satisfying. But with active cooler the temperatures will be hopefully lower. I can cope with some more noise if the card will be stable under stress.
Matthew on 23/10/2008 at 10:30
The 7900GT is still a decent card; I have a 512Mb version of that one myself, though I'm not sure that the double-sized memory makes much of an impact. It certainly runs something like Oblivion acceptably on 1920 x 1200, as long as the vegetation effects are pared down.
Rogue Keeper on 23/10/2008 at 10:47
Yes I was thinking about the 256 vs 512 difference and came to conclusion that 512 isn't really necessary for me, as I still play on my 17'' CRT at 1280x1024 maximum. And then since it has 256bit interface, the high data transfer should be processing even higher quality textures with ease. So I guess it's a reasonable offer - I don't have much space left in the case for advanced cooling solutions and it would be also a bit over-the-top additional investiment into my aging configuration.
