[gentoo-user] nvidia w/ water cooling?

[gentoo-user] nvidia w/ water cooling?

[james]

Hello,

> Date: 2006-11-17 18:36:15 GMT (2 days, 2 hours and 53 minutes ago)

I could not followup via gmane on a discussion about high end video cards,
so I'm just posing my latest resonse to  the Richard Fish comment on 
cooling and noise problems:




Air cooling is sufficient if you have a good case (/richard smiles at
his Antec P150).  The main reason to use water coolers is to reduce
the noise of the system, so you can use a much larger (and slower thus
quieter) fan to cool the GPU(s).  AMD procs run fairly cool, and both
the case and CPU fans on my AMD X2 4400 system are basically silent
even under high load.  But the system isn't anywhere near silent,
because of that damn GPU fan.

-Richard

Well the nvidia 8800 comes with water cooling, which should be quieter.
Anyone have any issues with water cooling under gentoo?  Is this able
to be monitored via ACPI or specialized software that works with Gentoo?

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=2665662&sku=B52-8004

Are the nvidia binaries for this card stable on gentoo(xorg 7.1)? 

This page does not list the "BFG GeForce 8800 GTX Water Cooling Edition / 768MB
GDDR3 / SLI / PCI Express / Dual DVI / HDTV / Video Card with 1/4” Fittings"
card as either working or being a problem. At $800.00 I would
hope that performance under gentoo (xorg 7.1) is flawless?

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_Video_Card_Support_Under_XGL


comments are most welcome as I do not want a gaming system that only
runs Winblows.....


James

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Re: [gentoo-user] nvidia w/ water cooling?

[Richard Fish]

On 11/19/06, james <wireless@tampabay.rr.com> wrote:
> Well the nvidia 8800 comes with water cooling, which should be quieter.
> Anyone have any issues with water cooling under gentoo?  Is this able
> to be monitored via ACPI or specialized software that works with Gentoo?

An $800 graphics card!?!  wtf!?  That's more than I spent on my both
my CPU and MB!

One problem is that the 8800 GPU does not appear to be supported on
linux yet by nvidia:
http://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/1.0-9629/README/appendix-a.html.
 The beta 9742 drivers don't list support for the 8800 either.

Anyway, the nvidia-settings utility can be used to monitor GPU temps.
No idea about the cooling system.

~ > nvidia-settings  -q GPUCoreTemp | grep Attribute
  Attribute 'GPUCoreTemp' (tacklebox:0.0): 52.

> card as either working or being a problem. At $800.00 I would
> hope that performance under gentoo (xorg 7.1) is flawless?

I'd probably look more at the 7800-GPUs.  You should be able to pickup
two really good 7800 boards for less than $800 and use SLI.  But you
might also want to ask here:

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?s=72a5597ccc7a13fb2fa9eff7b9575193&f=14

-Richard
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Re: [gentoo-user] nvidia w/ water cooling?

[Jerry McBride]

On Monday 20 November 2006 15:49, Richard Fish wrote:
> On 11/19/06, james <wireless@tampabay.rr.com> wrote:
> > Well the nvidia 8800 comes with water cooling, which should be quieter.
> > Anyone have any issues with water cooling under gentoo?  Is this able
> > to be monitored via ACPI or specialized software that works with Gentoo?
>
> An $800 graphics card!?!  wtf!?  That's more than I spent on my both
> my CPU and MB!
>
> One problem is that the 8800 GPU does not appear to be supported on
> linux yet by nvidia:
> http://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/1.0-9629/README/appendix-a.htm
>l. The beta 9742 drivers don't list support for the 8800 either.
>
> Anyway, the nvidia-settings utility can be used to monitor GPU temps.
> No idea about the cooling system.
>
> ~ > nvidia-settings  -q GPUCoreTemp | grep Attribute
>   Attribute 'GPUCoreTemp' (tacklebox:0.0): 52.
>
> > card as either working or being a problem. At $800.00 I would
> > hope that performance under gentoo (xorg 7.1) is flawless?
>
> I'd probably look more at the 7800-GPUs.  You should be able to pickup
> two really good 7800 boards for less than $800 and use SLI.  But you
> might also want to ask here:
>

Hey Rich,

Would you know if  there are any gotcha's with using SLI video cards? It seems 
this is getting harder and harder to avoid with current motherboards... From 
what I understan (yuk yuk) the SLI video looks just like AGP cards. Sound 
right?

Thank you, in advance.

Jerry
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Re: [gentoo-user] nvidia w/ water cooling?

[Richard Fish]

On 11/20/06, Jerry McBride <mcbrides9@comcast.net> wrote:
> Would you know if  there are any gotcha's with using SLI video cards?

Hmm, don't know.  I know that nVidia's README says that multiple
monitors and a couple of other features do not work with SLI enabled.
But I guess I would trust these guys when they say that linux users
get no benefits from SLI:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=582&num=1

Honestly, if I were putting dual graphics boards in my system for
linux, I'd probably want to hook 4 nice monitors up to it and make a
*really* big desktop.

> It seems
> this is getting harder and harder to avoid with current motherboards... From
> what I understan (yuk yuk) the SLI video looks just like AGP cards. Sound
> right?

I'm not sure what you mean here?  Did you confuse PCI-Express (PCIe) and SLI?

It is getting very hard to find (new) boards that support AGP
graphics, but you probably really want PCIe anyway in a new system.
There is not any really significant difference between AGP and PCIe
busses for linux.

In addition, many motherboards have dual PCIe-x16 slots to support two
graphics boards, and also support SLI for linking the boards together.
 But none of these boards require SLI to be used...they work perfectly
well with a single graphics board, and you can even use the other
PCIe-x16 slot for something else.

-Richard
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Re: [gentoo-user] nvidia w/ water cooling?

[Jerry McBride]

On Monday 20 November 2006 20:28, Richard Fish wrote:
> On 11/20/06, Jerry McBride <mcbrides9@comcast.net> wrote:
> > Would you know if  there are any gotcha's with using SLI video cards?
>
> Hmm, don't know.  I know that nVidia's README says that multiple
> monitors and a couple of other features do not work with SLI enabled.
> But I guess I would trust these guys when they say that linux users
> get no benefits from SLI:
>
> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=582&num=1
>
> Honestly, if I were putting dual graphics boards in my system for
> linux, I'd probably want to hook 4 nice monitors up to it and make a
> *really* big desktop.
>

I'd pay to see that. :')

> > It seems
> > this is getting harder and harder to avoid with current motherboards...
> > From what I understan (yuk yuk) the SLI video looks just like AGP cards.
> > Sound right?
>
> I'm not sure what you mean here?  Did you confuse PCI-Express (PCIe) and
> SLI?
>

Apparently I did. My bad.

> It is getting very hard to find (new) boards that support AGP
> graphics, but you probably really want PCIe anyway in a new system.
> There is not any really significant difference between AGP and PCIe
> busses for linux.
>

Thanks, that was what I was looking for.

> In addition, many motherboards have dual PCIe-x16 slots to support two
> graphics boards, and also support SLI for linking the boards together.
>  But none of these boards require SLI to be used...they work perfectly
> well with a single graphics board, and you can even use the other
> PCIe-x16 slot for something else.
>
> -Richard

Thank you, Richard. nice bit of information.

Jerry
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[gentoo-user] Re: nvidia w/ water cooling?

[James]

Jerry McBride <mcbrides9 <at> comcast.net> writes:


> Would you know if  there are any gotcha's with using SLI video cards? It seems 
> this is getting harder and harder to avoid with current motherboards... From 
> what I understan (yuk yuk) the SLI video looks just like AGP cards. Sound 
> right?


Hello Jerry,

>From my research, SLI is where the video cards get power driectly from the
the power supply, instead of drawing power via the buss/motherboard.

http://www.slizone.com/object/slizone_ask_mmm001.html


As far as monitoring the output voltages and ensuring that the current draw
of the video card, does not cause 'voltage sag' on that part of the power supply,
choosing a power supply that puts out lots of (DC) amps to the video card
in very important. 

I'm also concernded with monitoring the fluid temperature, pump (voltage and
current draw) to ensure a safe working system.

One nice thing about the Nvidia 8800, is a *lifetime* warranty.

That said, I think I'm going to continue my research on water cooled PCs
(many are put together by companies that do not have a clue how to properly
monitor pumps and fluids) until I'm convinced I have a robust, linux friendly
solution.

Since a big part of my needs is to write custom software utilizing the
GPU as a specialized processors, I'm going with the ATI 1900, due
to it's support of open-source drivers and it's unmatched performance
for certain types of calculations:

http://folding.stanford.edu/FAQ-ATI.html
http://www.netscape.com/viewstory/2006/11/14/amd-launches-stream-
processor-accelerator-board/?url=http%3A%2F%2F
www.tgdaily.com%2F2006%2F11%2F14%2Famd_stream_processor%2F&frame=true

What confuses me, is that close source nvidia has a "C" software 
development kit:
media-gfx/nvidia-cg-toolkit

Yet the open-source ATI technology, does not have  similar
compiler kit, but, provides lots of informatino into the details
of the hardware, particularly useful for string-matching, searching
and sorting intensive types of algos.


Real confusing on which graphics card to choose for coding.

Also note, for those interested in video (Mpeg4-avc/h.264/x.264) 
recompiling code and standard optimiztion techniques can really
make video deliver systems, based on gentoo, *FLY*.


Last, if you are looking for an AM2 && SLI && Sata mobo, then here
is the best prices/performance board I have found:

http://www.pcstats.com/artvnl.cfm?articleID=1993

Like Richard stated previously, much needs to be tested
under linux......


hth,


James




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gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

[gentoo-user] Re: nvidia w/ water cooling?

[James]

Jerry McBride <mcbrides9 <at> comcast.net> writes:


> Would you know if  there are any gotcha's with using SLI video cards? It seems 
> this is getting harder and harder to avoid with current motherboards... From 
> what I understan (yuk yuk) the SLI video looks just like AGP cards. Sound 
> right?


Hello Jerry,

>From my research, SLI is where the video cards get power driectly from the
the power supply, instead of drawing power via the buss/motherboard.

http://www.slizone.com/object/slizone_ask_mmm001.html


As far as monitoring the output voltages and ensuring that the current draw
of the video card, does not cause 'voltage sag' on that part of the power supply,
choosing a power supply that puts out lots of (DC) amps to the video card
in very important. 

I'm also concernded with monitoring the fluid temperature, pump (voltage and
current draw) to ensure a safe working system.

One nice thing about the Nvidia 8800, is a *lifetime* warranty.

That said, I think I'm going to continue my research on water cooled PCs
(many are put together by companies that do not have a clue how to properly
monitor pumps and fluids) until I'm convinced I have a robust, linux friendly
solution.

Since a big part of my needs is to write custom software utilizing the
GPU as a specialized processors, I'm going with the ATI 1900, due
to it's support of open-source drivers and it's unmatched performance
for certain types of calculations:

http://folding.stanford.edu/FAQ-ATI.html
http://www.netscape.com/viewstory/2006/11/14/amd-launches-stream-
processor-accelerator-board/?url=http%3A%2F%2F
www.tgdaily.com%2F2006%2F11%2F14%2Famd_stream_processor%2F&frame=true

What confuses me, is that close source nvidia has a "C" software 
development kit:
media-gfx/nvidia-cg-toolkit

Yet the open-source ATI technology, does not have  similar
compiler kit, but, provides lots of informatino into the details
of the hardware, particularly useful for string-matching, searching
and sorting intensive types of algos.


Real confusing on which graphics card to choose for coding.

Also note, for those interested in video (Mpeg4-avc/h.264/x.264) 
recompiling code and standard optimiztion techniques can really
make video deliver systems, based on gentoo, *FLY*.


Last, if you are looking for an AM2 && SLI && Sata mobo, then here
is the best prices/performance board I have found:

http://www.pcstats.com/artvnl.cfm?articleID=1993

Like Richard stated previously, much needs to be tested
under linux......


hth,


James




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