The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Do you handle ram in that fashion

 

i have handles ram with my hands, no problem. i very much doubt static leccy kills alot.

 

Ugh, "leccy" - I hate that term.
Static electricity isn't as much of an issue as you might think. The precautions are right to be there, you can easily destroy PC components by being stupid.

 

I actually asked my Networking and Communications teacher about that today. She said that older hardware was very sensitive to static. But it would usually degrade performance without frying it. The static sparks were so small that nobody would notice them without a microscope. She says that anything remotely modern was much better about it and that it's okay to handle components without a wrist wrap, just ground yourself. But the school requires us to use them which I don't disagree with.

Just FYI she used an ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe as her example of a modern component. The woman actually builds gaming PCs and has an i7 @ 4GHz with dual GTX275s at home

 

Thanks for the info guys. I more or less thought that touching those particular areas, increased the risk of damaging the component. So modern technology has somewhat dealt with that issue. So there must be some kind of buffer...or other component on modern boards that take that jolt into it...

Or modern hardware is just simply more impervious to static discharge

 

Well that's the thing. Older parts were just more prone to static discharge. You can still fry a board with a static shock, that didn't change. They just draw less static because the materials and electrical design are better.

All touching the contacts does is get skin oil and dirt on them which can interfere with the connection and cause issues. Not to mention the slight risk of damaging them as they are gold which is a soft metal. You can just gently clean your contacts with a pencil eraser.

I recommend you rest your arm on a metal part of the case when you work in your computer. Or you can just poke a metal object a few times to discharge yourself. Drive screws or the PSU are usually a safe bet.

 

fermi is intresting, its a smaller GPU than the previous generation, and should be here before xmas. its looking to be faster than the 5870, as ofc they can see the power of the 5870, and should be faster than a GTX295 then. also they are making a dual card aswell.

 

Static electricity would never have a visible spark with you near a PC component, or you've definitely destroyed it. Quite right, older and simpler CMOS chips were pretty bad for static compared to newer components. You can actually put a graphics card on a carpet and get away with it most of the time, not that I'm willing to risk it.
Radiator method is what I always use, so far so good.
It would quite frankly shock me if the (GT380?) wasn't faster than the HD5870. The considerable extra R&D time they're going to have had plus the nvidia 'one-upping at extreme expense' tradition will see us, I expect with a £380-£400+VAT card that's probably going to be something like 10-20% beyond the HD5870, thus roughly equal to the GTX295 (when the GTX295 is actually performing). As a single high-end GPU with 1 or perhaps 2GB of memory it should have much better performance at higher resolutions.
I was hoping ATI would implement 2GB per GPU natively this generation, but it looks like they haven't bothered - an extra weight on the nvidia side of the scales for what I upgrade to. As for whether they can tip the balance, I suppose I'm waiting until after christmas, unless of course the 5870X2 turns out to be pretty cheap, in which case I think you all know what's likely to happen.

 

more nVidifail.

if you see the 8 pin connector is 90 degrees to the soldering pins. the 6 pin is on a whole other side, and that is no where near its own soldering points, infact it seems to be placed on some audio header.

then you have 2 solder points at the edge of the PCB, in more fail as its clearly been cut off.... so i guess there demo of the card was fake?

 

i doubt nvidia will have 1GB with a 384 bit bus. probably 1.5GB id assume.

 

It's difficult to interpret what has happened there, it certainly isn't right. The solder points issue is weird, as every graphics card I've ever seen has a uniform solder joint for the power connector, and more to the point, the power connectors have either been close or together, certainly on the same side. Having the two connectors at right angles isn't necessarily a bad idea, but why have the option or 6 or 8-pins? If you could do it with just 6, just use a 6! (Though let's face it, nvidia's flagship new GPU coming in at under 150W stated? unlikely). I suspect what's more likely here is it's going to be a 6+8 - the PCB literally looks like it's been "shopped off" as opposed to chopped off.
Is it just me or does that card look 9.5" 4870 length, and not the traditional 10.5" GTX280 length? Where's the other inch? I'm sure it's meant to be there...

 

I take it all back, looks like there will be 2GB per GPU 5800s, on the basis of this:
http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/15489/34/

Now, where's my X2 version beeches?

 

Wow now that I look at it you guys are right. The power connectors are totally messed up. And if you look, even the stickers on the card have been cut off. Not sure if this is a weird prototype or maybe one unified PCB for both the single card and the dual? In fact the unified PCB sounds pretty realistic to me. Design a dual chip PCB and cut off part of it to accommodate a single card.

Also it looks like there are semi-circular holes in the PCB, presumably for airflow. Maybe part of the cooling needed for the dual version?

In fact, if you look at Shaff's earlier post showing the full card, that thing looks pretty rough like they've been playing football(either type) with it. Maybe an ultra early working concept?

 

Ventilation for the power regulators I would expect. What really hits home about that picture is the end of it, the holes are so close to the edge they aren't even circular, and it looks like a row of connectors has been cut off as well.

 

Hence my theory of one unified PCB design for both cards. What's a little extra circuitry on the card if it's disabled anyway?

Read my edit on the last post if you haven't.

 

Mmm, if they went to the lengths of cutting the PCB to shorten it, they probably wouldn't put all the extra copper down.

 

Probably would get recycled back into raw materials and used again. They would print the PCB, cut it to length, and not even bother placing any electronics on the end of the card to begin with, let alone the chips and caps and whatnot. Also remember they are showing working prototypes, not retail models. So you would expect stuff like that to be rough.

The connector DOES look like it's soldered to a spot for an aux audio port though, hmm. Those pics might even be a hoax who can really tell?

 

Let's wait until closer to release shall we? I'm not especially fussed at what the cards look like - I'm after some rough performance ideas...

 

Yes I agree but it sure is fun to speculate

I for one am excited about the 5870. I could give a crap less how they perform compared to Nvidia. Only how they perform vs my cards

I would like to wait a while for the price to drop a bit though. The cheapest at newegg is the Sapphire:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102856

At $379.99 that almost $100 more than I paid for my 4870s a month after release...

 

and at £310 for the HD5870 versus the £125 my HD4870 and £255 my HD4870X2 cost me, you can see why I'm waiting. I'm open to considering nvidia simply because with so much extra R&D time it's possible (though unlikely) that they've produced something that will own the 5870. That said, the dual card needs to be good (and prompt, unlike the 295) as that's what I'll be buying.