Re: NV bumpgate lead-free solder debacle

Posted on 2015-07-14, 19:31

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Heh. I admire your admiration of and propensity for steadfastedly defending nVidia I'm not defending nVidia at all. As I say, bumpgate is real, I lost two cards to it. The sensationalist piece by SA however... that's a bit much. but those electron microsocope pictures don't lie. They don't? How do …

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Re: NV bumpgate lead-free solder debacle

Posted on 2015-07-14, 19:07

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hey, the truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. I didn't make this up. No, you read it on the internet, someone else made it up :) And we're not talking about nVidia cards of that era failing after 3 years . We're talking about cards dropping like flies after several months of usage. I have lost …

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Re: NV bumpgate lead-free solder debacle

Posted on 2015-07-14, 18:39

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You realize that the claim that nVidia doesn't know at what voltages they can run the chips that they themselves designed is rather far-fetched, right? The fact that some chips can run at lower voltages doesn't mean much. Manufacturers never run the chips at their limits, but keep some healthy …

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Re: NV3x, R3x0, and pixel shader 2.0

Posted on 2015-07-14, 17:57

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Right, 'evidence' from Semi-accurate... I think we're done here.

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Re: NV3x, R3x0, and pixel shader 2.0

Posted on 2015-07-14, 17:43

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

whats the big deal with lead solder anyway, where kids eating video cards and getting sick? I mean really cmon Yea, the irony is that the lead-replacements gave off toxic fumes, so it's not like they made things so much healthier or more environmentally friendly :) They just reintroduced problems …

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Re: NV3x, R3x0, and pixel shader 2.0

Posted on 2015-07-14, 17:32

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That's true. I resurrected a 7900 Go GTX board with the oven baking trick once. It only lasted a few months though. In those days I worked for a company that also developed their own hardware. The lead-free soldering was a big issue for our embedded devices as well. Reliability wasn't as good as …

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Re: NV3x, R3x0, and pixel shader 2.0

Posted on 2015-07-14, 17:22

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have seen personally solder problems with 7900, 8600 and 8800. It tends to manifest as driver crashes, BSODs, or occasional display corruption. But I do have several 8600GT cards in use and an 8800GT that works fine too. However, that 8800GT needed a cooler replacement to become stable. The …

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Re: NV3x, R3x0, and pixel shader 2.0

Posted on 2015-07-14, 16:51

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Also, because PhysX came up (how this relates to NV3x I haven't the foggiest): GeForce 8 did not introduce PhysX-on-GPU; Ageia wasn't even part of nVidia until 2008. PhysX-on-GPU was launched on the GTX 280/260 and 9800GTX/GTX+ (w/driver 177.39), and later extended to include GeForce 8 and other …

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Re: HD 2900XT

Posted on 2015-07-14, 16:44

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Incorrect. Incorrect. The nVidia failures post-Geforce FX series (The GeForce FX series itself was not affected) was caused by bad engineering. There were several problems: 1) Incorrect underfill. The underfill is the epoxy-like substance that sits around the CPU die. It's designed to soften and …

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Re: NV3x, R3x0, and pixel shader 2.0

Posted on 2015-07-14, 16:01

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

no if i can maintain 60FPS and still get good graphics I will, Its why I bought an XFX 6600GT AGP for 220 when they came out, for CSS. I could then run 12x10 High and maintain between 60 and 120fps at all times. Sadly FarCry remained unplayable above medium settings until I finally bought my …

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Re: HD 2900XT

Posted on 2015-07-14, 15:02

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Show me an 8800 still in operation today... I have an 8800GTX that still works. The nVidia chips were rushed to the market and they had defects in their engineering. Incorrect. The problem was that new RoHS regulations no longer allowed lead-based solder (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldering …

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Re: NV3x, R3x0, and pixel shader 2.0

Posted on 2015-07-14, 14:34

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

no im not applying 2015 metrics to my early 2000's hardware, I required the best possible FPS for my gaming with the money I had, I played in tournments and did alot of lan parties, and yes even back in 2002 people wanted 60FPS, because it makes a diffrence. If my game ever went to 30FPS it would …

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Re: HD 2900XT

Posted on 2015-07-14, 13:20

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

no 8800GTX released Nov 8 2006, HD 2900XT May 13 2007 Indeed, I'm surprised that anyone does NOT know this. The 8800 series was THE DX10-hardware. Also the hardware that kicked off the GPGPU revolution by introducing Cuda, which later led to OpenCL and DirectCompute (both of which the original 8800 …

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Re: NV3x, R3x0, and pixel shader 2.0

Posted on 2015-07-14, 13:16

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

your memory seems to be failing you, I dont mention Tomb Raider because honestly it was the 2nd most forgetable tomb raider, and honestly didn't matter. Firstly, how does that imply that my memory is failing me? I take offense at these baseless accusations. Why do you have to insult me instead of …

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Re: Anyone else dislike multiplayer? No, just me?

Posted on 2015-07-14, 12:49

by

by Scali

in Milliways

in Milliways

I grew up with 'multiplayer' games in the sense of games on Atari, C64, Amiga and such (as well as arcade games), which you could play with 2 people or more. I loved those. But online multiplayer, I don't like that as much, partly because you play with complete strangers, and there's not much …

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Re: NV3x, R3x0, and pixel shader 2.0

Posted on 2015-07-14, 12:28

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That is receipt for endless delays. Why? OpenGL and D3D are standards, and drivers should support everything your game should ever want to do before you even start writing the game. In most cases, things should just work. I get the distinct impression that people these days seem to think that every …

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Re: HD 2900XT

Posted on 2015-07-14, 10:45

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Our projection machine at work has a Crossfire 4850 setup. Sadly AMD dropped support for it quite quickly, and there are no official drivers for Windows 8. We could sorta use the Windows 7 drivers, but they had some visual bugs in some cases. I had the same with the X1800/X1900 earlier, which didn't …

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Re: NV3x, R3x0, and pixel shader 2.0

Posted on 2015-07-14, 10:26

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Looking only at reviews of newly released graphics cards ignores the fact that the older cards have been on sale up to then, and even after the release of the newer products, in many cases, and that a lot of people own these cards, even though newer, better cards may be available now. So it is …

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Re: 8 bit PCM to 16 bit PCM adapter

Posted on 2015-07-14, 09:57

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

8-bit u-law is actually a sort of compression algorithm, so your raw samples are more than 8-bit linear PCM (probably 14-bit). What you probably need to do is u-law decode it (which I believe can be done with just a lookup table), and while doing that, you can promote it to 16-bit linear PCM.

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Re: NV3x, R3x0, and pixel shader 2.0

Posted on 2015-07-14, 09:42

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

AMD said they accidentally included old OpenGL driver to catalyst prior to the game release. I played Rage on my 4850 with first fix after that, and recall only screen tearing issues. On my 5770 I needed the last of the 4 hotfixes to get it working at all. The others got less than 1 fps, so even …

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