Nvidia, anyone?

[Mysticpuma]

I was interested to see where Nvidia were going with Fermi, and looking at screen-shots, the technology looks like it has amazing potential.

I also like the fact that there seems to be (I had 2x8800 GTS G92 in SLI) little issue with Nvidia in IL2.

However, I can't be that exclusive to my gaming, and the 8800's had a poor frame-rate at Max detail in CoD:World at War, so I looked around for a better card, and at-the time I found the Radeon 4890 Vapor-X (1Gb) at a good price.

Oh my! What a card! Al settings maxed out in (CoD), no slow-down, dynamic lighting...amazing!

I just finished Modern Warfare 2, on max settings, and no-noticeable slowdown.

The second reason I went for the Vapor-X is Temperature and Noise. Initially I had a 4870x2 (for about a week and sold it) and even though that was a beast, so was the noise from the cooling fan! The temps as-well would idle at 86 Degrees Celsius!

Noise was the biggest consideration as the PC is in a living room, and although I sit there with the Surround-sound headphones on, the family had to listen to the hair-dryer built in fan, blasting away, trying to keep the 4870x2 cool!

For this reason, cards that run cool are important to me, and a greater consideration than some others have.

Now that's a long way of getting round to the fact that I would love to have one of the cards with Fermi tech. but there is no-way I can justify the cost, when compared to the performance gain against the 4890 I have, to have a new piece of kit that sounds as-loud as the 4870x2 did!

Maybe one-day I'll get a water-cooling kit and be able to have one of these cards, nice and quiet in my PC, but for now, I can run IL2 at 1920x1200, with AA Super-Sampled, 24x and AF at 16x and lots of other effects.

So, for now, no-thanks to the latest Nvidia, but maybe one-day when they are cooler.

Cheers, MP.