What Graphics Card for SB81P?

Raelthorne

Raelthorne

Raelthorne

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26 Mar 2005
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I'm currently running an Shuttle SB81P with a Sapphire 256mb X800XL. I was wondering if anyone can recommend a card that will fit and would be a definite improvement on the X800XL.

I'm running a Dell 2405FPW @ 1920 X 1200 res in Windows and playing moist of my games in smaller windowed mode.

My main tower which I normally use is fried(waiting for a loan of pieces to try and repair it) and I'm thinking of upgrading the Shuttle as a cheaper alternative than replacing the tower, if thats necessary.

It is currently running the following on a 350W power supply:

Intel 3.2Ghz 775 Processor
1 GB Crucial Ballistix Ram(if the other machine isn't salvagable, I'll swap the 2GB TwinMos from that)
160GB Samsung HDD(again if the other machine is dead, I might install a second drive)

Any suggestions would be grateful(Keep in mind size and heat limitations please !!)
 
EVGA GeForce 7900 GT 256MB GDDR3 HDTV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-006-EA)

Price: £161.95 (£190.29 Including VAT at 17.5%)

EVGA GeForce 7900 GT KO SuperClocked 512MB GDDR3 HDTV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-007-EA)

Price: £219.95 (£258.44 Including VAT at 17.5%)

Or if you want to spend less then an x1800gto/7600gt
 
What are eVGA like as manufacturers? Are the decent and reliable & is there a reliability issue with 7900s?

Also any chance of getting an X1900XT or XTX in there or is that pushing my luck?
 
5% failure rate, high but you just have to RMA it and you get the step up program with evga.

No chance of an x1900xt they use dual slot cooling... pretty sure it wont fit.
 
SB81p will take the 7900gtx and x1900xt, they are dual slot coolers but the way the slots are laid out on the P series shuttles the cooler faces INTO the shuttle so you basically just lose the already useless 1x pcie slot.

However, wether its adviseable or not is another matter, I had an x1900xt in my sn25p and frankly the psu just wasn't up to it, it got unstable, kept crashing, bluescreening etc and all the issues were around the x1900xt. Swap to an x300 and all the problems went away.

I think you should be ok with a 7900gtx which are available for nicely under £300 now if you look hard enough. Either that or maybe an x1800xt if you can find one or 7900gt I'd say but I'd never buy a pre overclocked one.. thats half the fun!
 
My friend might be getting a 7950(or 2 in SLI mode), so he might be selling off a XFX 7900 GTX 512 mb card.

Any idea if this would fit and work without major thermal or power issues?

He's had 2 of them running in SLI for about 15 months and no problems, so I'd say they don't have any reliability problems associated with the 7900 series
 
he hasn't had 2 7900s for 15 months, I bought a pair of 7800s when they were top of the heap and that was less than 12 months ago. iirc 7900s have been around about 6 months?

Anyway, 7900gtx should be ok, certainly require a lot less power to run than an x1900xt.
 
I currently have a 7800GTX in my SB81P...with a 640 CPU 2GB ram 2*250gb WDD Drives and a NEC-RW..I am going to put my 1900XT in there...see if it runs ok

I had to make a new Cooler duct (used a crunchy nut cornflakes box) as I had to remove the Plastic one from the shuttle to get the GFX card to fit..Please note the cpu runs cooler with the one I made then the one it comes with..

GJUK
 
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