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OcUK GeForce 8800 GTX - how loud?

snow patrol

snow patrol

snow patrol

Soldato
Joined
20 Oct 2002
Posts
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Location
London
Hi all, i'm considering treating myself to a nice little upgrade. At the moment, my system is water cooled, but if i got on of these cards i doubt i would bother getting a new block and redoing my whole loop, so i'd just take the gpu water block off and keep the stock HSF on the gtx.

How loud do these cards go? Are they practically silent in 2d mode / watching avis etc? What about 3d gaming? Many thanks.
 
I don't think being in 2D or 3D mode makes much if any difference as the clock speeds are the same.
Out of the box the fan speed is 60% which neither goes up or down idle/load unless told too via rivatuner. At least mine does'nt.

As for how loud, at 60% I would call it silent, but I do have 2 x 120mm fans and I can't hear it over them.
It is however very audible at 100% but unless overclocked you don't need the fan to run at that speed.

Simple answer, at stock speeds it's silent, I can't hear it inside my case, which is an Eclipse.
 
thanks. I have an eclipse too. A couple of other questions:

does it come with the necessary power adaptors for the psu to plug into it? I have a seasonic 600w psu which is a good 18 months old so doesn't have the latest new fangled power connectors i think.

Also, i have 5 hard disks in my eclipse...will the gtx be too big? Will the disks get in the way? Any chance you could post a pic of your gtx in the eclipse? Thanks again :)
 
I have no digi cam so can't post a pic im afraid, but if you check out case central there is a eclipse thread some 20 pages long with plenty of GTX/Eclipse pics.

My GTX for some reason while needing 2 PCI-E cable inputs only came supplied with one. As the OcUK ones are now OEM I will guess they come with none at all now, but OcUK sell the cables seperatly.

Case Central
 
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Also I know nothing about water cooling, but I guess there is zero air circualtion inside your case. With 5 hard drives on the go surely the ambient air temp in there is a little roasty? Or maybe it's pretty chilly, I don't know what water cooling does :(

Anyway the GTX runs very warm even at idle, so high ambient case temps might drive the GTX to run hotter than it's allready 70-80C norm.
Mine ran so hot even with good air cooling inside the case, I had to drop in an additional exhaust fan below the card to keep the temps down. Loosing yet another PCI slot.
 
well, i have 4 120mm fans, 1 at the front sucking air out and one at the rear sucking it in, and another two 'strategically placed' inside the case but yes it is rather warm in there. I leave the side off a lot of the time.

in fact, just remembered i have SIX hard disks in there...and two dvd-rw. Will check out that link now.
 
The fan is at 60% and is near silent over other case noise for me.

Simply set the 2D core to lowest you can in Rivatuner (mines is 330mhz for Ultra) and it will run even cooler, because these GPU's idle in high 50's low 60's.
 
helmutcheese said:
The fan is at 60% and is near silent over other case noise for me.

Simply set the 2D core to lowest you can in Rivatuner (mines is 330mhz for Ultra) and it will run even cooler, because these GPU's idle in high 50's low 60's.
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Thats what I used to do, underclock the card. Untill somebody on these forums said that by underclocking it, you are effectivly overvolting it and risking potential damage to the core, so I stopped doing it.

Maybe it does'nt hurt it at all, but as my card has only the 1 year warranty I stopped it, just incase.
 
I dont know where this person got that idea, the 2D and 3D clocks have there own voltage table in the cards bios (I know 3D is 1.35 on my Ultra), on the 8000 series it cannot be modded in cards bios or by any software, only hardmodded, lowering or raising the 2D or 3D clock does nothing to voltage to cards.

In a ideal world I wish it was like my 6800Ultra where I bios modded the 2D volts to 1.1 (lowered from 1.2) and lowered clock to 300mhz Memory to 500mhz and then overclocked the 3D to 1.55v (max it will allow) and core to 470mhz memory to 1250mhz (DDR).

That way I am underclocked and undervolted most of the day when I only need to surf WEB or type .DOC's and card runs far cooler.
 
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ok, another question. Is it a worthy upgrade considering i'm 'only' on a a64 dual core @ 2.6ghz. I will be aiming for 1920x1200 though. I can't really afford/justify a complete system haul for at least another 12 months :(
 
In games like FEAR where its all mostly about GPU, sure you see big gains, In games where its about CPU/GPU, you will be bottlenecked more.

No matter what CPU anyone has, they are bottlenecked at some stage by these current GPU's.
 
helmutcheese said:
In games like FEAR where its all mostly about GPU, sure you see big gains, In games where its about CPU/GPU, you will be bottlenecked more.

No matter what CPU anyone has, they are bottlenecked at some stage by these current GPU's.
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He 's going to run at 1920x1600 so far less of a bottleneck, add a load of AA/AF and i doubt his CPU will be holding him back in that many games.
 
snow patrol said:
ok, another question. Is it a worthy upgrade considering i'm 'only' on a a64 dual core @ 2.6ghz. I will be aiming for 1920x1200 though. I can't really afford/justify a complete system haul for at least another 12 months :(
Click to expand...

Im on a AMD X2 @ 2.6 myself and the difference was huge, nope it was massive :p that was going from a 6600 though. I know nothing of ATI cards so I don't know how big of a jump it will be for yourself.

It is however a lot of money, so sleep on it for a day or two. I slept on it for weeks, untill a competitor had an offer that was too good to refuse.
 
pegasus1 said:
He 's going to run at 1920x1600 so far less of a bottleneck, add a load of AA/AF and i doubt his CPU will be holding him back in that many games.
Click to expand...


I meant overall, FEAR uses GPU mainly, other titles rape CPU as much as GPU.
 
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