Fast performance but extremely noisy fan
Written: Feb 25 '04 (Updated Feb 25 '04)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Superfast performance, excellent graphics quality, great driver support, low street price
Cons: THE FAN WILL MAKE YOU DEAF!, takes 2 slots.
The Bottom Line: Buy it if you can handle the noise. This is the reason why the street price is low.
|
|
|
| dragoon101's Full Review: BFG Technologies BFG ASYLUM GEFORCEFX 5800 ULTRA 1... |
The Bottomline: This is a discontinued video card which is a great deal if you can find it used. The performance of this card is truly top notch, but the big drawback is the fan-noise.
I upgraded from a Gainward GeForce4 Ti4200 128MB and this review is based upon that comparison. In today's games, I think the Ti4200 has the absolute minimum performance required to play Battlefield 1942 and other graphic intensive games. When I say minimum, I mean that it works well at medium resolution with about half of the graphics enhancements turned off. Note that this game is not even playable using a GF4MX440 video card. My favorite game is BF1942 so my comparisons are based on that game along with some other popular ones. Also, it is important to note that I am running the following system (only crucial specs included):
* Intel Pentium 4 2.6
* Asus P4S533
* 1GB PC3000 Memory
* Western Digital 7200RPM Hard Drive
* Turtle Beach Santa Cruz
GRAPHICS QUALITY
The quality is unreal. I can now see things I couldn't see before. In BF1942, I can now play games in 1600x1280 resolution with every detail turned on and the draw distance set as far as possible. Not only can I play it at this level, it looks intense. The sky is clearer, the textures are more vibrant and the antialiasing does an effective job at cutting down the jagged edges (but only up close). The real graphics power of this card came to light when I tried it on Need for Speed Underground. Wow! You can see your car's reflection in the water, everything is sparkling and shining, and when you hit that NOS boost, your screen starts to blur! These are effects I ever saw before because my card was too feeble to do it at a reasonable speed. Essentially, driving a car with this card makes you feel like you're truly going fast.
SPEED
As I said before, the speed is amazing. In BF1942, what I initially thought was internet lag is what I now realize a result of my old video card. Sometimes, I would turn around and I would get a choppy screen and get shot before I could shoot. None of that is present with this card. In the BF1942 Secret Weapons of WWII expansion pack, the graphics resolution was pumped up like crazy. On my old card, I had to turn down the resolution and graphics enhancements to their minimum values to get reasonable gameplay. With this new card, I am now able to play full resolution with full enhancements without delay.
COOLING
The cooling on this card is nothing short of insane. First of all, the card takes up 2 back-panel slots on your computer so make sure you have the slot next to your AGP port open. The reason why it's so thick is because the heatsinks and blower extend from the card and make it a real big heavy beast. There are some really heavy heatsinks covering this card which appear to provide cooling for the RAM chips as well. The unusual thing about this system is that it uses a blower, not a fan. Most of the time, fans are implemented to blow cool air onto hot heatsinks or to suck hot air the same. In this setup, the entire cooling system is enclosed in a plastic case. It looks like the heat from the heatsinks gets trapped in the plastic case and the blower sucks that hot air out through the rear ventilation panels toward the back of your computer. This is why you need 2 slots: both of those slots are taken up by ventilation panels.
The only problem here is that blowers are always louder than fans. Nvidia/BFG realized this and wrote code in their drivers/BIOS to activate the blower only when necessary. The minute you enter DirectX mode for any reason, the blower kicks into high gear. Occassionally, even when idle, the blower will turn on to cool itself down. This blower is so obnoxiously loud that I can't even describe the sound level. It's about as annoying as trying to listen to music while someone is vacuuming in your room. I exaggerate, but it's about the noise level of a small hand-vacuum. It took some getting used to but I think I'm over it now. I realized that when I play games, I either have my sound cranked up (during the day), or I have it on headphones (at night). In either situation, I can't hear anything but the game sound. But, if you're trying to play a game at a low level on your speakers, forget it. There's just no getting around it. I think Nvidia understood this and discontinued this card in favor of a better cooling system. It almost seems that they threw together this crude and noisy cooling system in an attempt to crank as many points as possible out of it in benchmarking.
FINAL IMPRESSIONS
It's very very easy to get caught up in the numbers game. ATI is now touted as the king of video cards where Nvidia clearly reigned. In fact, some driver developers were accused of artificially inflating benchmark scores by writing their drivers to detect benchmark software and responding to it. While it might be true that ATI has a faster top-notch video carda available, your real search for a video card should be based upon performance per dollar. I don't care if I have the biggest and baddest video card available. I just want to be able to play my games like they were meant to be played. In my research, I looked at several different video cards including the ATI cards. I think this card matches up around the same specs as the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro (not sure about that one). Those cards run you about $225-250. This card can be purcahsed second hand for about $150. You do the math!
Check out these sites for TONS of reviews on video cards:
http://www.neoseeker.com
http://www.anandtech.com
You may also just do a search on your video card with the term "shootout" or "roundup" which is usually a big comparison review of several video cards tested side-by-side.
The Bottomline: Get it if you can handle the noise. You can beat this deal.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 150
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
dragoon101
|
 - Top 1000 |
|
Location: California, USA
Reviews written: 54
Trusted by: 7 members
About Me:
I am musician, audiophile and an attorney who enjoys fine quality electronics.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.