Fanless graphic cards--do they work, and how? Do you need a graphicscard for an i7 multi core PC? Why? Seven cores is enuf?!

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

They run hotter.

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.

The following, is a third question.

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/Compari...ireGL _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

On Sat, 14 Apr 2012 13:21:53 -0700 (PDT), RayLopez99
wrote:

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.

On 14/04/2012 4:21 PM, RayLopez99 wrote:
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

RayLopez99 writes:

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.

--
Knock on the sky and listen to the sound.
--Zen Saying

On Sunday, April 15, 2012 11:43:07 AM UTC+8, Bug Dout wrote:
RayLopez99 writes:

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.

--
Knock on the sky and listen to the sound.
--Zen Saying

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

On Apr 14, 4:21 pm, RayLopez99 wrote:
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

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.

On 15/04/2012 1:08 AM, RayLopez99 wrote:
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

On Apr 15, 4:14*am, Yousuf Khan wrote:
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.
--
// T.Hsu