Fanless graphic cards--do they work, and how? Do you need a graphicscard for an i7 multi core PC? W

[RayLopez99]

Just like the title says, has anybody tried the fanless (no fans) graphics card, which are used at the low end (saw one at FRY's) I guess because the power consumption is not high enough to justify a fan? Are you a FAN of these cards?

Second question: why do you even need a graphics card if you have an i7 multi-core uP chip? You have seven cores, you would think for apps that DON'T automatically consume all seven cores (that is, for NON-game apps, I think), that the other 'spare' cores would be marshaled by the uP to do graphics? Or is that not how it works? I know that some chess games have a switch that essentially says to "maximizes your PC resources" which I take to mean the program will attempt to use all available RAM and all cores in a PC.So by definition you won't have any 'spare' cores to do graphics? Perhaps AutoCad is the same way? So that would explain why you need a PCI-type graphics card and not have to rely on the uP for graphics support.

Any insight appreciated. I tried to open a complex AutoCad file and even with an i7 uP had difficulty doing anything with it, hence this post. It could have been the file however, since it was designed to stress your PC by being very complex. But I don't see why I could not open and play with it faster than I could. I did not have a graphics card in that machine, just relying on the Intel internal graphics co-processor.

RL

 

[John Doe]

They run hotter.

 

[Paul]

RayLopez99 wrote:

You would have been better off making two (or more) posts.

Your subject line would then be a little shorter

Just like the title says, has anybody tried the fanless (no fans) graphics card,
which are used at the low end (saw one at FRY's) I guess because the power
consumption is not high enough to justify a fan? Are you a FAN of these cards?

I have two fanless cards. One of those cards, was not stable, until a blowing 80mm
case cooling fan was pointed at it. That's what you may need to do.

Even if you need to do that, use a separate fan mounted near the video card,
there are advantages. If that 80mm case fan of mine wears out, it only takes
seconds to replace. By comparison, try and find a replacement for the crappy
little fan that comes on normal video cards. Replacing that is not an easy job
but can be done by replacing the whole cooler.

Second question: why do you even need a graphics card if you have an i7 multi-core uP chip?
You have seven cores, you would think for apps that DON'T automatically consume all
seven cores (that is, for NON-game apps, I think), that the other 'spare' cores would be
marshaled by the uP to do graphics?

An i7 does not have seven cores. No x86 processor has seven cores. It's a poor
numbering scheme Intel came up with. (I.e. Number never matches core count.)
Use ark.intel.com if you want to know more.

Video cards, come with up to 2048 cores, or roughly 200x what the best CPU has.
Video card cores, excel at graphics operations. CPU cores excel at general purpose
computing problems (good branch capabilities). CPU cores are generally all FP capable,
whereas the graphics cards limit how many cores can do FP (floating point). For
example, if you saw in an advert "FP/16", it would mean only 2048/16 = 128 graphics
cores support 64 bit floating point arithmetic.

Or is that not how it works? I know that some chess
games have a switch that essentially says to "maximizes your PC resources" which I take to
mean the program will attempt to use all available RAM and all cores in a PC. So by definition
you won't have any 'spare' cores to do graphics? Perhaps AutoCad is the same way? So that
would explain why you need a PCI-type graphics card and not have to rely on the uP for
graphics support.

Any insight appreciated.

Software that runs on the CPU, can be single threaded or multi-threaded. Multi-threaded
software designed to work on multiple cores, will "maximize" your performance. Not all
software designs can be written that way. Some compute problems are not of the
"divide and conquer" type. To give you an idea of the split, the Adobe Photoshop
program is split into single threaded and multi-threaded filters. Even though
Photoshop deals in image processing, one of the application areas that makes
good usage of multi-threading, only half of the filters written ended up being
multi-threaded. The single-threaded ones still run on one processor core. So
the other cores on your processor are asleep. Depending on the filters you
commonly use on Photoshop, a fancy processor could be largely wasted.

I tried to open a complex AutoCad file and even with an i7 uP had
difficulty doing anything with it, hence this post. It could have been the file however,
since it was designed to stress your PC by being very complex. But I don't see why I could
not open and play with it faster than I could. I did not have a graphics card in that machine,
just relying on the Intel internal graphics co-processor.

RL

Be aware, that CAD software likes to use OpenGL. DirectX and OpenGL may both be
supported by GPU chips. The OpenGL driver on low end hardware, is hobbled on
purpose to not give good performance in CAD applications. The "certified" OpenGL
driver of a FireGL or Quadro card, may run faster. This is a money grab by the
video card manufacturers. If you look at the silicon on the FireGL or Quadro
cards, they're "regular" GPU chips, with a configuration bit set that indicates
they're to support good OpenGL operation. In the same way that a Tesla card, used
for GPGPU computing, has a config bit set to enable more of the FP (floating point)
capabilities. The silicon all starts out equal, and has configuration bits
to control market segment, and what is charged for the chip when so set.
(I.e. One GPU chip, is designed to be used in multiple video card designs.
It can be used in a gamer card, a FireGL card, a GPGPU computing card, it can
have blocks of cores disabled for differentiation, it can use cheaper slower
graphics memory and so on.)

Your Intel internal graphics co-processor, might not even have OpenGL, but if
that were the case, the CAD tool would likely complain right away. In the past,
when things like that happened (no OpenGL support), software emulation was
available with things like "Mesa".

(No - *don't* use this. This is purely an illustration. Don't run off investigating Mesa.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesa_(computer_graphics)

When I researched CAD problems in the past, some students did some testing,
using their low end (non-CAD) cards, and magically, when around 50 objects
were present in their CAD window, graphics performance started to drop. So
when you open "real" CAD drawings with hundred of thousands of polys in them,
the performance will go into the toilet. If you have a FireGL or Quadro
card, less so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadro

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATI_FireGL

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_ATI_graphics_processing_units#FireGL_series

Even saying all of that, when I went to the desk of a mechanical designer
at work, he was demonstrating the CAD job that took *seven hours* to load into his
computer. We paid perhaps $20K for a computer for the poor guy, and even
with the most expensive OpenGL card money could buy, he still had what I
would class as pathetic performance. He was able to give us a demo of
rotation of the 3D object he was building, but I would not call the
result "fluid-like". So if you were thinking that "spending money"
always fixes issues like this, it doesn't. I was quite disappointed when
I saw it, and felt sorry for the guy. He's a good mechie, and it's a waste
to have him using crap like that. He had enough projects on the go though,
that he never lacked for useful work to do.

Part of the problem, in cases like that, is the tool not doing a very
good job of "culling" things that cannot be seen. The software may
use the graphics card to resolve "visibility" for objects, and when
there are hundred of thousands of objects, or imported piece parts,
doing a "dumb" visibility check really slows down the video card. In the view
he was using, lots of internal bits and pieces, could never be seen, and
should have been removed from the display list.

One of the best ways to speed up any computer, is better written software,
not more expensive processors. When an assembler I was using, was sped
up by a factor of one hundred, after being rewritten, what would I have
needed to pay, to get a 100x speedup using only a new processor ? Buying hardware
to fix bad software, is not very cost effective.

Paul

 

[Charlie Hoffpauir]

Just like the title says, has anybody tried the fanless (no fans) graphics card, which are used at the low end (saw one at FRY's) I guess because the power consumption is not high enough to justify a fan? Are you a FAN of these cards?

Second question: why do you even need a graphics card if you have an i7 multi-core uP chip? You have seven cores, you would think for apps that DON'T automatically consume all seven cores (that is, for NON-game apps, I think), that the other 'spare' cores would be marshaled by the uP to do graphics? Or is that not how it works? I know that some chess games have a switch that essentially says to "maximizes your PC resources" which I take to mean the program will attempt to use all available RAM and all cores in a PC. So by definition you won't have any 'spare' cores to do graphics? Perhaps AutoCad is the same way? So that would explain why you need a PCI-type graphics card and not have to rely on the uP for graphics support.

Any insight appreciated. I tried to open a complex AutoCad file and even with an i7 uP had difficulty doing anything with it, hence this post. It could have been the file however, since it was designed to stress your PC by being very complex. But I don't see why I could not open and play with it faster than I could. I did not have a graphics card in that machine, just relying on the Intel internal graphics co-processor.

RL

My response is to your first question....

I have used a fanless graphic card since 2009, and I think it's great.
It's a Gigabyte GV-NX96T512HP GeFprce 9600 GT a 512 MB card. I don't
do games, and I needed dual monitor support, and don't like noisy
fans, so this was my card of choice, and it's been just fine for my
purposes.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Just like the title says, has anybody tried the fanless (no fans) graphics card, which are used at the low end (saw one at FRY's) I guess because the power consumption is not high enough to justify a fan? Are you a FAN of these cards?

I can't answer to the reliability of fanless cards, but I'm pretty
confident in surmising that these would be pretty low-performance cards,
as they have to remain cool without any active cooling. So in a world of
tradeoffs, you tradeoff performance for cool and quiet.

Second question: why do you even need a graphics card if you have an i7 multi-core uP chip? You have seven cores, you would think for apps that DON'T automatically consume all seven cores (that is, for NON-game apps, I think), that the other 'spare' cores would be marshaled by the uP to do graphics? Or is that not how it works? I know that some chess games have a switch that essentially says to "maximizes your PC resources" which I take to mean the program will attempt to use all available RAM and all cores in a PC. So by definition you won't have any 'spare' cores to do graphics? Perhaps AutoCad is the same way? So that would explain why you need a PCI-type graphics card and not have to rely on the uP for graphics support.

The name "Core i7" does not mean that it's got 7 cores, it's just a
model number, i.e. a marketing term. It's just a number to distinguish
it from its lower-end siblings, like the i3 and i5. The highest number
of cores on any i7 is six cores, while the vast majority are of the four
core variety.

Regarding the cores in a GPU, depending which designer (AMD or Nvidia),
you can have anywhere from hundreds of cores to thousands. The cores in
AMD and Nvidia GPUs aren't comparable to each other either, one designer
prefers fewer more powerful cores, while the other prefers a greater
number of less powerful cores. However, in either case, none of these
cores are comparable to Intel's CPU cores at all. All GPU cores are
entirely dedicated to floating point calculations, whereas CPU cores are
only half-dedicated to floating point, and the other half to integer.

Now, recent Intel CPU's also have a built-in GPU. I don't know how many
cores those ones have, but usually they cannot compare to either Nvidia
or AMD's GPU cores in performance. The Intel GPU is therefore a very
light-weight GPU. It's taken some of the low-end business away from the
Nvidia or AMD low-end discrete GPUs, but you still need one of their
mid- to high-end discrete GPUs for anything serious.

Any insight appreciated. I tried to open a complex AutoCad file and even with an i7 uP had difficulty doing anything with it, hence this post. It could have been the file however, since it was designed to stress your PC by being very complex. But I don't see why I could not open and play with it faster than I could. I did not have a graphics card in that machine, just relying on the Intel internal graphics co-processor.

That's hardly surprising. The Intel GPU is light-weight, definitely not
suited for AutoCAD.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Bug Dout]

Any insight appreciated. I tried to open a complex AutoCad file and
even with an i7 uP had difficulty doing anything with it, hence this
post. It could have been the file however, since it was designed to
stress your PC by being very complex.

Might also be you lack memory and a good disk system. How big was the
file? A 64-bit OS, 64-bit Autocad program, and lots of memory (6-12GB)
might help. And to get large files off the disk fast use either a Solid
State Drive (SSD) or 2 or more hard drives in a RAID 0 configuration. I
have both on my PC (SSD for C:, RAID 0 for D and don't suffer much
disk delay.

 

[RayLopez99]

Might also be you lack memory and a good disk system. How big was the
file? A 64-bit OS, 64-bit Autocad program, and lots of memory (6-12GB)
might help. And to get large files off the disk fast use either a Solid
State Drive (SSD) or 2 or more hard drives in a RAID 0 configuration. I
have both on my PC (SSD for C:, RAID 0 for D and don't suffer much
disk delay.

Thanks to all in this thread, especially Paul, Khan, Bug Dout and the otherfellows.

My questions were all answered. Since I don't do much CAD anyway, for my purposes I'll stick with my present setup but will keep an eye out for a fan-driven graphics card in the future.

I am impressed that you, Bug Dout, are using an SSD drive for your C drive--that takes nerves of steel and/or frequent backups I think, since C drivescan corrupt easier I've read. I think many people prefer the boot sector to be a traditional spindle drive, but since most programs load automatically to your "C:" drive by default, it makes sense to make your fastest drivethe C: drive, though your overall drive performance is limited by your slowest drive, which probably would be the Raid0 drive in your system.

RL

 

[Flasherly]

Just like the title says, has anybody tried the fanless (no fans) graphics card, which are used at the low end (saw one at FRY's) I guess because the power consumption is not high enough to justify a fan? Are you a FAN of these cards?

Second question: why do you even need a graphics card if you have an i7 multi-core uP chip? You have seven cores, you would think for apps that DON'T automatically consume all seven cores (that is, for NON-game apps, I think), that the other 'spare' cores would be marshaled by the uP to do graphics? Or is that not how it works? I know that some chess games have a switch that essentially says to "maximizes your PC resources" which I take to mean the program will attempt to use all available RAM and all cores in a PC. So by definition you won't have any 'spare' cores to do graphics? Perhaps AutoCad is the same way? So that would explain why you need a PCI-typegraphics card and not have to rely on the uP for graphics support.

Any insight appreciated. I tried to open a complex AutoCad file and evenwith an i7 uP had difficulty doing anything with it, hence this post. It could have been the file however, since it was designed to stress your PC bybeing very complex. But I don't see why I could not open and play with itfaster than I could. I did not have a graphics card in that machine, justrelying on the Intel internal graphics co-processor.

RL

They're as low as $10 rebated, so what have you got to lose over MB
chipped vid. After building a 775 Intel socket CPU cooler yesterday,
(apart from cheap builds and an audio oriented system -- about reason
enough for me to head to AMD, rather than a 1155), I'd tend look at it
in the same way. Devise something cooler. Doesn't take much to cut
through 775 plastic standoffs and replace them with screws, bolts, and
some insulating grommets. Though fanless may be touted out as
'acceptably hotter than hell,' as the rep's will return to say on
Newegg, doesn't mean to me their cost-cutting is the end to it all.
And I still don't like my hard drives pushing 120F+. These may not be
the days of building your own case cooling or lapping heatsinks --
although that aspect needn't be surpassed because it's easier to build
better, nor reason enough to forgo quick and dirty deeds done cheap.

So, yea - it's the better alternative, turning off the MB vid chip and
actually using that empty PCI-E slot. The $10 it'll cost, figure is
good enough for a least dreaming about running $700 CAD apps, like you
actually knew what you were doing in optimizing the system to that
purpose. Nice, in getting through a higher-res video encode without
stuttering all over the place. I'd expect at least that, although I
stopped an ancient AGP ATI 9000 series from doing that by bumping up
the 478 Celeron D to a 3G P4 in 800Mhz FSB single core config. Dunno
about nuances yet on this 775 P4 I built yet with a 7000 Series ATI
AGP -- it's faster, but going out already sold and not mine.

Looks like they're all dying out, though, drying up parts wise, and
it's getting cheaper to do the AM3+ socket thing until something else
comes down the pipeline in old stock. Decent entry dual cores for $10
or $15 recertified be sweet if the MB brandnames weren't crap.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

I am impressed that you, Bug Dout, are using an SSD drive for your C drive--that takes nerves of steel and/or frequent backups I think, since C drives can corrupt easier I've read. I think many people prefer the boot sector to be a traditional spindle drive, but since most programs load automatically to your "C:" drive by default, it makes sense to make your fastest drive the C: drive, though your overall drive performance is limited by your slowest drive, which probably would be the Raid0 drive in your system.

I'm using an SSD as my C: drive too, most people who have an SSD are
using it for their C: drives too. The biggest reason for having one at
all, is to speed up your boot loading times. I'm seeing some things that
are upto 10 times faster on the SSD than the HDD it replaced. Minimum
improvement is 3 times faster, and there's nothing that is slower on the
SSD.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Ting Hsu]

I'm using an SSD as my C: drive too, most people who have an SSD are
using it for their C: drives too.

I did the same thing as Yousuf. Got a 120gb Crucial SSD, specifically
for the C drive, for Win7 plus all the applications that I use
frequently. Everything else, including personal data, music, temporary
internet files, etc, goes onto a normal hard drive. However, I'm
getting so used to SSD speeds that I might buy a 240gb Mushkin SSD, so
I can be less picky about what goes onto the SSD.

 

[Charlie Hoffpauir]

Thanks to all in this thread, especially Paul, Khan, Bug Dout and the other fellows.

My questions were all answered. Since I don't do much CAD anyway, for my purposes I'll stick with my present setup but will keep an eye out for a fan-driven graphics card in the future.

I am impressed that you, Bug Dout, are using an SSD drive for your C drive--that takes nerves of steel and/or frequent backups I think, since C drives can corrupt easier I've read. I think many people prefer the boot sector to be a traditional spindle drive, but since most programs load automatically to your "C:" drive by default, it makes sense to make your fastest drive the C: drive, though your overall drive performance is limited by your slowest drive, which probably would be the Raid0 drive in your system.

RL

Nerves of steel? I'd say that probably 90% or more of SSD drives in
service are in service as the boot drive. Mine is a 120 GB for the OS
and most programs. All data goes to a Raid0 configuration on a pair of
7200 RPM drives. Performance is pretty good.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

I did the same thing as Yousuf. Got a 120gb Crucial SSD, specifically
for the C drive, for Win7 plus all the applications that I use
frequently. Everything else, including personal data, music, temporary
internet files, etc, goes onto a normal hard drive. However, I'm
getting so used to SSD speeds that I might buy a 240gb Mushkin SSD, so
I can be less picky about what goes onto the SSD.

Yeah, I have a 240GB Corsair SSD. For years, my previous boot partition
was limited to 200GB of the 1TB available on that hard disk, so I was
already used to keeping things minimal on the boot partition, and so
when SSD's with at least 200GB of capacity showed up (and went on sale),
I went for it. The 240GB is actually more space than I'm used to.

I disabled the disk index, and I already had my swapfile on another hard
disk, so those were really the only optimizations that I needed to do
after installing the drive. Oh, and of course make sure that the drive
is aligned to 1MB partition boundary, which is the default with Windows
Vista and 7 anyways, if you're creating the partition from scratch.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Flasherly]

I did the same thing as Yousuf. Got a 120gb Crucial SSD, specifically
for the C drive, for Win7 plus all the applications that I use
frequently. Everything else, including personal data, music, temporary
internet files, etc, goes onto a normal hard drive. However, I'm
getting so used to SSD speeds that I might buy a 240gb Mushkin SSD, so
I can be less picky about what goes onto the SSD.

Or what doesn't in one of two primary partitions, a 3G Win install,
having been reduced to a few incrementally dated series of 800meg
compressed binary images for streaming the OS back to C. Done at two
minutes, a nice safeguard nevertheless for testing programs or chance
repercussions off the internet. The occasions though of import being
a prevailing emphasis on native hardware streaming across drives, or
partitions, from a bare DOS command prompt, much as to incur when
tempering audio streams for post production work, similarly then
stored in bulk. Links to the OS are so much an addendum to another
location, on other drives, permitted when nothing so much as registry
entries are suspect for a simple directory as well added to contain
what files C may require as to a manifest of finalized settings. A
level of convenience least imposing to throughput, further exacerbated
by time employed, efficacy stands well to platters, to at times think
to L-one to -three MPU caches and at what lessor magnitude yields on
quality contain returns, if at all for correlative stratagems
conducive to perhaps encroach upon an end older programs, such as
HyperDisk, once widely fulfilled in a form of bridging memory to a
mean effectiveness of subsidiary caching algorithms.

 

[DK]

Yeah, I have a 240GB Corsair SSD. For years, my previous boot partition
was limited to 200GB of the 1TB available on that hard disk, so I was
already used to keeping things minimal on the boot partition,

"Minimal". 200 GB. That's a good one. To this day, I have 4 GB
C:\ partition. Fits XP and "core" programs. Full backup or restore
takes about 2 min from A to Z.

DK

 

[Charlie Hoffpauir]

"Minimal". 200 GB. That's a good one. To this day, I have 4 GB
C:\ partition. Fits XP and "core" programs. Full backup or restore
takes about 2 min from A to Z.

DK

Hmmm 4 GB in C partition running XP.

I think my first HD was about 500 MB (yes MB) and that was total, not
just C. But then, even earlier I managed to boot my SWTPC 6800 system
from a 1K Eprom. Can we go back to a PDP 8 that booted from toggle
switches?

 

[Rene Lamontagne]

How about an Interdata 7/16 which did a boot from front panel toggle
switches than loaded the operating system from paper tape spooled from an
ASR33 teletype, The output was sent via 300 baud modem to a remote
controller which activated and ran a large Ferranti Packard flipdisk sign.

Or a Honeywell Alpha 2000 , Input everything in Octal on a numeric keypad,
Teletype RO35 printer as a monitor.

My first hard drive was a 48 MB Conner, paid $950.00 for it.

Regards Rene


"Charlie Hoffpauir" wrote in message

"Minimal". 200 GB. That's a good one. To this day, I have 4 GB
C:\ partition. Fits XP and "core" programs. Full backup or restore
takes about 2 min from A to Z.

DK

Hmmm 4 GB in C partition running XP.

I think my first HD was about 500 MB (yes MB) and that was total, not
just C. But then, even earlier I managed to boot my SWTPC 6800 system
from a 1K Eprom. Can we go back to a PDP 8 that booted from toggle
switches?

 

[Flasherly]

Hmmm 4 GB in C partition running XP.

I think my first HD was about 500 MB (yes MB) and that was total, not
just C. But then, even earlier I managed to boot my SWTPC 6800 system
from a 1K Eprom. Can we go back to a PDP 8 that booted from toggle
switches?

That's what he said, and I do the same thing. If running under
proprietary aspects of MS code controlling a NTFS formatted drive,
there may be complications I'm unaware when doing what he also does,
two-minute image restorations. But since all are FAT32, with only a
sand-boxed NTFS, for both subsequently linking by isolation topology,
not much point not to run a 4Gb C for those really very few [of us]
doing that. A platform integration that is by in large yet coherent
within 99.9 percent of brown-wrapped software releases provided by an
after market of programmers. In fact, I see no reason soon why it
shouldn't continue that way. Hardly a gutter-swipe over 1K limited
segment addressings over Motorola Zylogs, 300-baud acoustic couplers,
or early 12" 10Mb platter arrays spiraling upwards to $10K. In fact I
would be first to stand thoroughly to laud any 4G partition user for a
striking resemblance they have to me.