I wondered what Grafics would work better on MoBo with Intel P35 chipse a -XFX PVT88PYDF4 GeForce 8800GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP or an ATI RADEON HD 3870 512MB-GDDR4 PCIe 16x - HDCP Any thought is welcomed!
The 8800GT is slightly faster than the HD3870, but usually more expensive. It also depends what brand the HD3870 is, the OEM ATI ones usually aren't that good.
Sapphire are a good company, but their 3870s are awful, absolutely atrocious. Stick with HIS or Asus for the 3800 series.
What makes you say that sam? Mine have been working perfectly fine @ 850/1250 for the past 5 months...
Mine gave me a headache after 5 minutes with the fan (and I'm not joking either, not even Russ' FM121 fans at full speed do that) and died after a day's use. The cooler on them is pathetic at least.
First quote, I was talking about the cards themselves... Second quote I was talking about the coolers themselves - I have not used them yet since I have both of them under water.
I have ordered a Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 Rev. 2 VGA Cooler I hope it'll be allright with my Graphics!
I ordered one of those and it arrived last night. I spent three hours trying to install it because the installation method is crude at best, and the instructions aren't very helpful. After tall that struggle, the cooler is so wide it doesn't fit in my case (and my case is not narrow) and the graphics card doesn't work any more.
@sammorris I have received it as well a day ago, I could manage to install it on my Radeon 3870 and it's fit but the small heat sinks which are meant to be installed on the RAM are not quite stabile, further more the whole graphics takes now so much space that I can't slide anything into the PCI slot next to the PCI-e x16 slot. My biggest concern however how efficient will be the cooling now without any fan on it, as I was just doing basic computing and the heat sink was already very hot. I just hope that I'll not fry my graphics when I'll start gaming.
Well, the reason the card doesn't work any more is trying to attach the cooler, during the plastic clip stage of the process, a huge crack appeared in the die of the GPU. As for the heat, graphics cards get HOT normally, you just don't notice because you aren't normally able to touch the actual heatsink, only the plastic covering it.
With a graphics card, you can probably go up to 80C, maybe even higher depending on your GPU (the 8800GT gets to 90C load). For the CPU, keep it under 65C for load.
Graphics cards tend to vary from 60C to 90C in their load operating temperature with normal coolers. With aftermarket coolers it's generally a good idea to try and keep the temperature at or below 80C, for the reason that the voltage regulators and RAM can be heated up by the core more due to the design of aftermarket coolers. For the main CPU you need to keep it under 65C, but if it's overclocked, ideally 55C or lower.
So do you think that my ATI Radeon HD 3870 graphics from Sapphire is better off with the Arctic cooling or was it better with the original fan cooler?
That depends which one you got. The single slot Sapphire one with the bigger fan is horrendous and should be replaced ASAP. The standard dual slot one is ok.
