"johns" <johns321@moscow.com> wrote in message
news:1187718293.031884.95970@i13g2000prf.googlegro ups.com...
| I've been testing a bunch of game cards to use in my
| Engineering CAD labs. So far, regardless of mobo
| and cpu, the top card in benchmarks is the nVidia
| GF7950 GTO. It beat a Quadro based CAD system
| by 45% in every benchmark ... and in speed of
| calculation in a very advanced rendering project.
| So far the 8800 I have tested has failed in every
| single project. It crashes, runs slow as heck, or
| generates all kinds of distortions and color errors.
| I think that card is a piece of crap, and there is no
| fix I can determine. I tested all of them in both
| XP 32-bit, and Vista Business 32-bit. I believe the
| reason the 7950 is the top card, is because nVidia
| techs spent time optimizing the drivers for it in XP.
| Equally, they have kludged the drivers for the 8800s
| and that has killed those cards. They are not back
| ward compatible in XP, and the Vista driver needs
| a lot of work.
|
| johns
|
Just out of curiousity, did you ever get a chance to try one of the 7950 GX2
varieties? I was contemplating putting one of those into my XP gaming
system - the dual GPU in a single PCI-e slot appealed to me. I'm not ready
to try the 8-series yet, there's just too many odd bugs and tweaks in
them... I've built 5 computers for friends and family in the last few
months, and the 2 that insisted on Vista got an 8800, which was just a
freakin nightmare... But, like you, I've found the 7950 series just rock
solid, 2 of the Win XP systems I built were gaming/graphics stations with
those in them, and they scream when compared to the Vista units.
> Is there any real difference in the many different varieties of that
> card by different companies?
There will be if the card is in a Dell, or HP box. Those
companies have their own version built for them so
they can buy in huge quantities at wholesale. And
generally those cards are dumbed down. For example,
I have a lab full of Dell 9100 PCs with 6800GS video
cards in them. Those cards don't even require a
power connector, and you can see on the card
where the actual connector could be soldered in.
The card was cheapened for Dell.
If you get a card from an offshore reseller, it will
be identical to the commercial card, but it will
only have a 1 year warranty .. offshore.
Yep. Same thing here. I have not tried the version of the 7950
you have, but the 8800 just would not run beans in XP, and
Vista simply would not run the app. We are in the middle
of a change over to Vista, and only time will fix this stuff.
Re: Graphics card advice. 
Linear Mode
