rallee2{at}comcast.net wrote:
> 340M? There's cards with 1GB of superfast videoram now.

The card I have here is the MSI NX8800GTS-340... they've apparently 
discontinued the -640MB model.  It's air-cooled, takes up TWO slots in 
the back of the PC, and weighs quite a lot with that huge heat-sink on 
there.

>Quite a trend especially when considering the wattage required for GPUs
that exceed all but the most modern CPUs in transistor density and number.

A disturbing trend, considering the ever-dropping wattages on the CPUs...

>Have you readabout IBM's latest super computer combining CPUs and
"cells" similar to that in Sony's PS3?) 

Admittedly, no, but AMD is apparently leveraging their aquisition of ATI 
by modifying their Radeon GPU cores to accomplish amazing things in 
floating-point.

>   However more in line with help on hardware it may be worthwhile to
point out that there is also a major trend toward quietude.
[snip]

You're preaching to the choir, Jimmy... I sell this stuff for a living, 
and have been an advocate of quieter fans, liquid cooling, and Antec 
cases for several years now.  Vantec Stealth fans at 21dB are my 
standard offering.

Tough sell in some cases to rip a completely-fine-but-loud heat sink and 
cooling fan off a high-end video card, but if the rest of the system is 
liquid-cooled, there's less of an incentive to "just leave it alone".

I've seen a few cases with internal sound dampening for otherwise noisy 
components, and Antec is now using really squishy silicone dampeners on 
their hard drive mounts instead of harder rubber ones.  About the only 
way you can tell the computer is running is by the blue LED's on the 
front panel.

Thankfully, the hardware itself is handling these advances in 
clock-speed throttling and such, as there's really nothing in the OS/2 
world monitor/track/allow such things.  At least, nothing really 
reliable - yet.

How's THAT for a blatant attempt to bring this back on-topic? :)

-Derek

-- 

Derek W. Keoughan,
Finnegan Software, Inc.,  Brampton, Ontario, Canada  http://www.finnsoft.com
416-410-4774 phone - 800-258-0033 toll free - 905-846-5516 fax

Consulting, Networking, Cabling, Internet, Hardware, Software, Tech Support
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and Upgrades

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http://www.cafepress.com/finnsoft


 
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