What does it mean to the everyday user that needs a new video
card?
Well I'll break it down for you:
PCI-Express 2.0 interface it the slot type that you will need on
the motherboard.
3-way SLI means you can have three of these cards in your
computer and connect them up as one video out put, two video out put, or three
video output. Than means that you can use the three cards on one monitor, two
monitors, or three monitors.
The clock speed is for the processor on the card, the GeForce GTS 250. For graphics intensive programs the imaging is offloaded from
the CPU (Processor)
to the video card cutting down on the work the CPU has to
do. This is great for programs such as AutoCAD, any program that you would use
to render graphics, or for playing Games!
The Max Resolution would require a very large monitor to see
small print. How ever with that high of resolution with an image the image would
be very clear. This is especially true if you have a HD (High Definition)
monitor.
The memory is GDDR3 - Graphics
Double Data Rate 3 channel, this means the memory uses three channels to get the
data in and out of the memory. Very fast.
The card has 512 Meg of memory but with it being GDDR3 it
should be as fast as an older card with say 1 Gig of GDDR2 memory.
The 128 Streaming Processes means that the processor can
have up to 128 processes working at the same time, almost the same as Intel's
Hyperthreading. Makes through put from the CPU to the monitor very fast and at a
higher resolution than older cards.
My PNY GeForce 8500GT died on me. Would you believe on a
Saturday night? Yup, that is a major problem for a guy like me that likes to
play games!
Now on Sunday I could have went down to the local electronics
store and bought a decent video card at twice the price of the one I ordered
from Newegg but decided to do my research and find the best possible card for
the money I had to spend.
This is the card I found for half of what one the local store
wanted for it. The difference is I had to wait three days to get the card and
install it in my computer!
And the game I am currently playing needs 128 Meg of memory for
the Video, my T-30 laptop only has 32 Meg and it does not share memory with the
system. So no games for a while...
The BFG GTS250 arrived, the installation was fairly smooth. The
card uses two slots because of the heatsink/fan so I had to move a card to
another slot.
When I installed the card (which is quite long for today's
cards) I found it was up against the SATA interface cables for two of my hard
drives. I had to move a hard drive down a slot and re-route the cables away from
the end of the BFG GTS250.
Once installed I started up the computer and installed the
drivers. The installer from NVIDIA didn't take very long. After the restart I
was back in business!
How ever I have a problem with heat, the temperature for the CPU
has risen 4 to 12 degrees Fahrenheit depending on the load on the CPU and file
opening or closing.
Part of the problem I discovered was the fan on the BFG GTS25o
is
set for 40% of operation and the frequency for the MDAC processor is set at the
max of 750 MHz. These two factors do not allow the MDAC to cool off when the
processor is at or near idle. This the heat increase. The NVIDIA and BFG drivers
do not allow for 'Tweaking' the fan speed or the MDAC frequency.
To correct this I had to find a program that I could use to
lower the MDAC processor speed and increase the fan speed. The program I found
is a very nice program called RivaTuner (http://www.guru3d.com/),
quote the help file:
Riva Tuner is a complete powerful tweaking environment, providing
you everything you may need to tune NVIDIA GPU based display adapters.
I lowered the MDAC processor speed to 700 MHz and increased the
fan speed to 50% and the temperature of the dropped from 96*F to 84*F almost the
same before the PNY 8500GT died.
Increasing the fan speed to 75% makes the system stable once
again.
I am rating the BFG GTS250 eight out of ten.
Although the graphics improvement over the NVIDIA 8500GT is
stunning the locking up of the computer due to the increased heat is bothersome.
Because if a non-technical person bought this card they would have a lot of
problems with it locking up under load in a normal computer. This video card is
for the more experienced user not the novice.
This site contains a lot of information. As
with any publication not all information is available due to space, time, or
subject constraints.
If you have a question that you did not find the answer
on this web site you a can
ask your question here and we will endeavor to get you the most up to date
answer possible!
