NV30- the fan will last how long, we must dust it how often?

[Entropy]

The web is by far the worst offender here - most web sites use fonts that look terrible on TFT-with-DVI, while the system fonts in Windows are all far more readable. In contrast for gaming the TFT is superb even though it's only got 40ms response (I'm sure some quake-heads would probably be more picky).

Heh. You bet. I don't consider TFTs useful for competitive play, or even fooling around. Too frustrating. But there are other genres of games where they do just fine.

Regarding fonts, I'm afraid that I don't have much experience with the font smoothing on Windows boxen. I thought they used subpixel (manipulating RGB subpixels individually) anti aliasing techniques on LCD screens, just as Apple uses subpixel techniques on three out of the four font smoothing methods they offer (the fourth being optimized for CRTs). It seems to be functioning properly in all apps. I don't know how Windows apps handle text. They may not rely on the OS in the same way.

Big boxy enclosures hang on for much weaker reasons. Mainly ignorance, I'd say. Most people simply don't know there are alternatives, and Dell doesn't offer them. People who care strongly enough buy desknotes instead.

Mostly true, although I'd argue that only very recently has the 3D performance of a desknote come up to the point where it's actually useful, plus to get a comparable system you pay twice as much - while the premium for a SFF case is less than a hundred quid (and could be much less if the volume ramps).

Exactly. To buy a "desktop replacement" you have to be sufficiently concerned to really cough up money, and make more substantial compromises. Realistically, cost has to be a huge hindrance to this trend. Even so, this is a market segment that grows very quickly, which can hardly be said for straight desktops. That says something. There is marketshare to be won in Small Form Factor if a big player decides to exploit the niche.

(Pet peeve, why the "#¤%&&!!! do we still have to use enclosures that can accomodate 5 1/4 inch floppys? The floppy grew smaller, but the form-factor was extended to harddrives, and once the harddrives grew smaller, it was passed on to optical drives. FFS!! And it keeps getting extended to DVDs, Blue-ray and all the other computer targeted optical disk systems. Bleh.)

To be honest, while recently announced TFT panels show that manufacturers are working on the response time problem, they are not targeting 3D graphics but completely artifact free DVD playback. We'll see how far they push the development beyond that. Additionally, notebook screens have so far had slower response times than desktop panels. So one could argue that portables don't need the most powerful gfx chips, since they can't get good framerates anyway due to the display limitations. On the other hand, you definitely want to drive them at native resolutions and not lower, and as you point out, edge aliasing is particularly nasty on TFTs so high quality AA would be most useful. None of the available portable graphics chips can produce useful framerates at native resolutions with decent AA. Yet.

Getting this slightly back on the NV30 track, I have problems seeing desktop processors continue to scale ever upward in power consuption, and gfx cards along with them. It flies against the ergonomic requirements of small size, low noise and low heat generation. If this goes on, at some point going forward the market is definitely going to fork, and the bulk of office and home users will start to march to a different drummer. Shuttle and VIA are examples of niche players that are trying to gain a foothold by breaking with the current paradigm to some degree. It will be interesting to see how this pans out over the next decade.

Entropy

 

[Mariner]

In my experience, the font smoothing for LCDs in WindowsXP seems to work pretty well. My LCD at home is a 15" one, however, so the resolution isn't that high.

Can't say I've ever noticed any problems in reading text on it - it's certainly much clearer than the 21" CRT I'm using at the moment.

I just hope other displays such as OLEDs and FEDs finally come out soon as these should be better is most respects than either LCDs or CRTs.

 

[BRiT]

Yes. I was indeed talking about a dual-function box: HT-PC and gaming. It just seems to be a waste to not have the best gaming card available today hooked up to the 61" RCA HD-TV. Now that would be some gaming madness! However, I forgot about the meager 200W PSU. I may have to look into a PSU replacement; does anyone know if the Antec TRUE Power series will fit? I'll prob have to dig into Shuttle's sizing specs.

As far as SFF/noise/etc, I'm moving away from maximum overclocking and heading more towards silencing my pcs. I've grown very very tired of the whir of 8Krpm 60mm and 120mm fans. When I had a PSU die on me, I picked up an Antec TRUE Power 550Watt unit. I love it's fan control option, the main 120mm fan is so much more tolerable when it's not running full blast. It's not even needed, as the Athlon XP2400+ is plenty of cpu power for my likes, so I'm not even overclocking. I'm also moving to quieter heatsink/fans, with a Vantec AeroFlow on the way. I'm moving away from large tower cases as well. When my new mb arrives [epox nForce-2], I'll be switching the main system from a full-tower case into a mid-tower until I do move into a true SFF case.

If I do feel that the XP 2400+ isnt fast enough and I want some monster overclocking, I'll go the watercooling route. I may end up doing that anyways, when the EXOS system is widely available. I truely envy my MAC-using friends for how quiet their systems are.

I certainly hope that NVIDIA finds a way to make the NV30 run "silently", even when gaming. If the dustbuster on it is any louder than a typical case-fan, I'll be disappointed. I certainly hope that the industry does not head down the route of larger/noisier hsf on video cards.

Now I'm all for the extreme overclocking performance market, but I think that's something the consumers should do, not the manufacturer for a reference design.

--|BRiT|

 

[Johnny Rotten]

Just thought I'd add my voice to those who are definitely looking towards a small form factor/high performance PC as their next machine. I'm really really tired of this 21" noisy tower sitting on my floor. Chipsets such as the nForce2 that have high quality onboard sound and ethernet would basically allow me to do without ANY slots other than the AGP port. The only drives I need are a single hard drive (though 2 drive raid would be nice) and a cd reader/burner.

Video card size and noise will almost assuredly have a bearing on my next high performance video card purchase.

 

[Dio]

In my experience, the font smoothing for LCDs in WindowsXP seems to work pretty well. My LCD at home is a 15" one, however, so the resolution isn't that high.

How on earth do you turn it on???

 

[Thowllly]

In my experience, the font smoothing for LCDs in WindowsXP seems to work pretty well. My LCD at home is a 15" one, however, so the resolution isn't that high.

How on earth do you turn it on???

Display Properties -> Appearance -> Effects -> Check "Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts:" and then select "Clear Type" instead of "Standard"

Looks really nice, and many fonts that are not AA'ed with the Standard AA method becomes AA'ed with Clear Type.

 

[DemoCoder]

Because the person I was responding to was talking about using a SFF PC as a HOME THEATER BOX on a LAN

NOTE:
The person you were talking to was talking about using one for home theatre use and for LANNING. IE, going to LAN parties. you know, games?

This thread started out by supposing that NVidia is cutting themselves out of some emerging market because their card might not fit into a Shuttle type device.

Now it has devolved into talking about a hypothetical market where people want to use small form factor PCs for Home Theater use AND simultaneously use it for gaming AND simultaneously it has to be fairly mobile so you can pick it up and take it to a LAN event.


Ignoring the fact that the Home Theater market itself is small (very few households can afford to blow from $3000 to $20000 on such a setup), the subset of Home Theater users who want to use a PC as their main HT component is even smaller. The cross section of those who want to plug and unplug their HT-box and take it to LAN events is infinitesimal. Anyone who can afford to drop $3000 to $10000 on a DISPLAY alone can afford to buy a separate computer for LAN play.

Home Theater users invest in permanent installations. I have all my equipment rack mounted in a closet. The fan on my Sanyo PLV-70 is louder than any PC fan. They no more want to use a portable PC for their main video driver than they want to use a notebook computer or portable DVD player. Hmm, I wanted to watch a DVD, but my roommate seems to have taken my home theater out of the house! I want to build a video server, but I can't fit a RAID array into the box, ooops. I have an X-Box, PS/2, and DreamCast + PC routed through a video mixer, so I can play PC games on the projector, but my Desktop PC doesn't have to be engaged to my HT, and people can watch the HT while I still use my computer for other things.


And if small form-factors were all the rage for HT, no one would be buying expensive amps and videomixers or 200lb CRT projectors, they'd be using something like the Bose all-in-one system that "hides" the HT equipment. But Bose's system is an utter failure in the HT market.


Let's look at the ultimate SFF design: Apple's Cube. It has no fan, but is completely passively cooled. Sleek industrial design across the board. Big Market failure even among Mac users.


So there may exist scenarios where you can't use the NV30 in some setup because of the size. You can always concoct pathological scenarios. But I think the HT/Lan gaming scenario is fairly way out there on the bell curve. Wake my up when when the market size reached $ 1million.

If the future is SFF devices, then we need a new AGP/PCI standard designed with SFF in mind, and cards designed to fit. Trying to wedge a bunch of bulky, hot, PCI/AGP cards into such a device is bound for trouble. If not lack of power than lack of heat dissipation or signal interference. The notebook computer market doesn't try to shoe-horn large form factor devices into the design, they have a separate expansion bus standards: PC-Card, Compact Flash, SD-card. A SFF market needs a new kind of expansion bay and that mandates different size tolerances, pinouts, heat, power, and signaling standards.

Shuttle XPC isn't really an elegant solution. It's a hack. Apple was able to go one better with the Cube because Apple has a closed hardware design.

 

[g__day]

Actually the thread started out wondering if NVidia HSF is over the top and if it will keep on keeping on without "excessive" cleaning maintenance.

If NVidia folk in the know say yes, dust won't be a worry because... I may be happy, otherwise I wonder will I want a card that has to be groomed, cleaned and polished every 6 weeks...

 

[DemoCoder]

I meant the latest "thread" of discussion about small form factor cases. And how horrible it is that Nvidia's card might not fit well in these 2-slot, jam-packed, 200W power supply cases. And how millions, nay thousands, nay dozens of people might not be Nvidia customers because of this.

I'll be selling my NVDA immediately.

 

[antlers]

Quite apart from the heat-sink/fan, I suspect the NV30's power requirements (which necessitate the heat-sink/fan) may make it incompatible with virtually all non-custom-built PCs. What minimum power supply rating will they recommend? Plenty of people had power supply problems with the 9700, and the NV30 has to be dissipating substantially more power.

 

[Althornin]

I meant the latest "thread" of discussion about small form factor cases. And how horrible it is that Nvidia's card might not fit well in these 2-slot, jam-packed, 200W power supply cases. And how millions, nay thousands, nay dozens of people might not be Nvidia customers because of this.

I'll be selling my NVDA immediately.

Sarcasm - refuge of the weak.
Who cares?
Why must you take everything and twist it to fit your comments? we were talking about a specific situation in which it wouldnt be usefull. sorry, but you sarcasm doesnt negate that.

 

[Geeforcer]

What I'd like to know is should ATi adopt a similar cooling device in the future, would I be allowed to re-use some of the better windblower jokes or would I have to come up with entirely new ones?

 

[DemoCoder]

I meant the latest "thread" of discussion about small form factor cases. And how horrible it is that Nvidia's card might not fit well in these 2-slot, jam-packed, 200W power supply cases. And how millions, nay thousands, nay dozens of people might not be Nvidia customers because of this.

I'll be selling my NVDA immediately.

Sarcasm - refuge of the weak.
Who cares?
Why must you take everything and twist it to fit your comments? we were talking about a specific situation in which it wouldnt be usefull. sorry, but you sarcasm doesnt negate that.

I already provided more than enough reason and sound argument to justify my position as to why the original scenario is irrelevant, so my sarcasm is refuge of the storng.

And my point stands, is it a valid scenario? I may as well bring up the possibility of ATI 9700 PRO's not fitting inside 1U rackmounted servers. Oopps, ATI locked themselvers out of the "blade" rackmounted renderfarm market. Do we even know if the 9700 PRO works in the Shuttle devices without overheating and drawing too much power from its measely 200W power supply? We just got done with a thread where the usual crowd was harping and nitpicking on the NV30's lack of displacement mapping until I brought up the fact that ATI doesn't support it either. Is this another case of an irrelevant 9700PRO advantage that is simply unconfirmed no-evidence conjecture?


I mean, really, the people who are harping on this whole cooling issue really are concerned about NVidia right? Rational observers merely exploring a use case scenario? We don't even know what the product line will be yet, whether there will be a 400Mhz version with regular cooling, or whether another OEM will ship a card with a different cooling technology. And what the NV31 and NV34 will be like. And already we are speculating that there will never be an NVidia DX9 card that works in a small form factor case.

The fact of the matter is, most of the complainers are the same old group we known and love, that's why I think most of these cooling solution comments are somewhat disingenous. I truly do not believe that most of the negative commentators are unbiased and honest.


I own an 9700PRO and I love it, and I believe both the 9700PRO and NV30 are great cards that are about the same, but with slightly differing feature sets, and I'm really getting sick of the people here polarizing the discussion in the total absense of facts. It's like the political hacks who take the minor differences between republicans and democrats and try and blow them up into something huge.


Just look at the extreme and insinuating adjectives used to describe the NV30 in the thread. Do we really need use words like "monstrousity" or "ultrahot", "destroy" or "smash" when talking about the feature sets between these two cards?

 

[Nagorak]

I think people are really blowing the CPU issue way out of proportion just to get on Nvidia's case.

 

[R300King!]

I'm afraid my mainboard won't have enough space for the NV30...looks like I'm stuck with a 9700 Pro. bummer.

..I just had to.

 

[PVR_Extremist]

Hehehehe

Where can i buy one of those

 

[Pladeaux]

Ok the article did state that this cooler design is a very simular type as used in their laptop designs. If they are being used successfully in that configuration, why then would you believe it would fail to perform in a desktop configuration. I too believe that there may be too much worry and vascilation on this subject. Nvidia isnt a company to blow it on cooling set-up imho. Why dont ye all wait and see. Btw, it was still fun to read all the speculation in this thread hehe.

 

[GraphixViolence]

That seems a little hard to believe... the GFFX cooler looks thicker than most laptops on its own!

 

[Tagrineth]

It just seems to be a waste to not have the best gaming card available today hooked up to the 61" RCA HD-TV.

Well my consoles sure do look great on a 61" Sony HDTV anyway ^_^

/tangent

 

[demalion]

Honestly, DemoCoder, if it weren't for your (apparent) obsession with labelling those you disagree with as fanbois, I'd be on your side for some of your comments.

I do think that the (apparent) requirement of this fan assembly to reach target performance goals is a worrying indicator of future nv3x cards (but it seems this will be addressed somewhat in future by improved 0.13 implementation).

I do think concerns about long term functionality of the fan assembly are valid concerns that need not have anything to do with fanboism (but I think pointing out that some laptop fan designs are based on a similar principle answers some of that concern well).

I do think there was an excessive amount of joking, pretty much useless and unproductive too, about the fan assembly. True to form, however, you lumped in every bit of discussion of concern about the fan as useless and unproductive, and continue to spend time trying to marginalize the idea that it would be better for everyone (well, except ATI I guess) if they could achieve the performance without such an assembly.

I don't know, it just seems to me that throwing around the term "fanboi" and trying to make it stick to people, especially posters in general instead of specific individuals, is well established as self-defeating and excising it from your posts completely would have led a much more productive discussion of your points in this thread.

I also think on the one hand proposing your own supposition about the market without figures or substantion (that hardcore enthusiasts won't mind the extra slot or fan assembly size being required) and then simply dismissing another supposition about the market without figures or substantion (that SFF PC users would ever want high performance 3D) sounds a bit off (to me). For instance, I think there are a few other SFF Macs out there that you left out of your comments concerning the popularity of SFF PCs, and some people seem to be saying they'd want a SFF PC if they can fit a powerful 3D card in there.

Umm...smaller is better, and I'm pretty sure nVidia will follow this trend when they can.