Confused about graphic cards

[leaf]

there are so many graphic cards my head hurts.

My monitor keeps all of a sudden blacking out.  I have to reset the computer to get it to come on.  It doesn't happen too often, perhaps once a day or every other day - enough to be annoying when i have worked a while on a picture.  I think it is mostly because the card gets too hot and shuts down.  I think this is the case since I have 6 hard drives in my computer - the video card doesn't have a fan (just a heat sink) and it happens when i am working the video card hard...

so ANYHOW.. i think i might try and upgrade the video card to one with a fan and see if that helps (as well as have less hard drives)

but what is the difference between a card that is
Gigabyte Radeon HD 3870 512 MB OC (ATI Radeon HD 3870, 512 MB, CrossFire-st�tte, PCI Express 2.0)
Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 512 MB Blue PCB (ATI Radeon HD 3870, 512 MB, CrossFire-st�tte, PCI Express 2.0)

they are exactly the same as far as the ATI Radeon HD 3870, 512 MB, CrossFire-st�tte, PCI Express 2.0 part is concerened but they have gigabyte, or sapphire at the start or any of the other 10 'manufaturers' or whatever that first wording is for... but why so many different names / makers for one single card?  and how are they different?
Asus EAH3850/G/HTDI/256M

[leaf]

well ok.. i found an answer to a bit of my question.

there are only two chip manufacturer (the thing that makes the card works - or the main guts of the card) those companies are Nvidia and ATI.  Then lots of different companies take those chips and make graphics cards out of them (ATI also makes graphics cards)  When people talk about what graphics card they have, they generally talk about the chip they are using.

Source of this valuable info
http://www.pcmech.com/article/modern-video-cards/

In the graphics world, there are 2 types of manufacturers to talk about. A few companies make graphics chips, which are the actual chips that perform all the graphics processing, and several companies take these chips and use them to make complete video cards. When people talk about their video cards, they generally just talk about the chip. This is because you will get fairly identical performance with cards from several different video card makers if they use the same graphics chip.

ATI and nVidia are currently the only makers of graphics chips that are powerful enough to give a good experience in modern video games. While Intel makes integrated graphics chips suitable for 2D applications and a few other companies, such as Matrox, make dedicated cards suitable for 2D, anyone serious about gaming is only looking at products from ATI or nVidia.

[ErickN]

Tom's hardware website has a lot of information and reviews about computer hardware, including graphic cards. I'm used to read the french version (www.tomshardware.fr) but other languages are available on www.tomshardware.com.

[Jack Schiffer]

My monitor keeps all of a sudden blacking out.

Leaf   Make shure you are not using more wattage then your powersupply can
handle, you say you have six harddrives,and maybe  a CDrom, DVD
if your powersupply is to small graphics may shut down.

[leaf]

yeah, that is definitely a possibility.  I had big problems before with the drives dieing off and the monitor blacking out - then i upgradied the power supply to a 850W supply (I think i had a 500W one before).  I guess I don't know for SURE that I have enough power but I think that i MUST....

is there a way to check for sure?
I have added up what I have inside (approximate usage) and came to around 650W

The problem is very similar to when i was running out of power though...

[Jack Schiffer]

Leaf
850watt is good it may be your monitor or graphics card how old is your
your motherboard it could be alot of things causing your problems

I would check
motherboard for bulging copacitors
try another monitor and graphics card separately

I would also check your case temp it may get to hot

[Snufkin]

yeah, that is definitely a possibility.  I had big problems before with the drives dieing off and the monitor blacking out - then i upgradied the power supply to a 850W supply (I think i had a 500W one before).  I guess I don't know for SURE that I have enough power but I think that i MUST....

You cannot always trust the wattage on the sticker. Lower-end Asian manufacturers and vendors frequently overrate them, it is not uncommon for them to sell for example 250W PSUs as 500W or 550W. I dealt directly with some Asian manufacturers, and have first hand experience, usually a vendor can order the manufacturer to put any sticker they want for marketing purposes.

On the other hand, reliable vendors/manufacturers might sometimes even slightly underrate their power supplies.

I have a 500W from a reliable vendor, running Intel 2Core Duo, 4 HDDs, 512MB graphic card, etc. and I have had no problems so far.

[Snufkin]

Here you can nicely calculate how much power is recommended for your system:
http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp
(assuming it is real, and not only on the sticker)

[Adeptris]

Look for external Storeage and move a couple of drives, I purchased one of these on Ebay second hand quite reasonable, and it is mirrored so if one drive fails I plug a new one in and it recovers, I also keep another copy of all images in another location, in case of fire or buglary. 

I only have working files on my PC which is a laptop, and archive the others off to the external store.  

Having so many drives in one box, what would happen if one caught alight?


This one on Ebay ($230) is like the one I brought:

NETGEAR�s Storage Central is an innovative product for storing and protecting music, games, photos, videos and other important files on a secure device.

Include 1,000GB = 1 TB (2 of 500GB Western Digital WD Caviar� SE 3.5-inch) drives.

Connect Storage Central to any router or switch and Smart Wizard takes care of the configuration. Storage Central functions like a local disk drive but without requiring a dedicated PC.

You can setup this storage as RAID 1, Mirrored Disks to which each disk store the same data, so that data is not lost so long as one disk survives. Total capacity of the array (RAID 1) is just the capacity of a single disk = 500GB. 

David

[JerryL5]

If you have a heat problem due to lots of hardware in the case,
a new video card is not going to help. A simple test is to leave the side panel off
and see if the problem goes away.  You may need fewer hard drives in the case.
Maybe a big external drive would be the answer.

[leaf]

If you have a heat problem due to lots of hardware in the case,
a new video card is not going to help. A simple test is to leave the side panel off
and see if the problem goes away.  You may need fewer hard drives in the case.
Maybe a big external drive would be the answer.

yeah i have a few external drives already

The new card will help because the new card will have a fan on it - the old card fan-less which I am supposing might be the problem with 6 drives * in warm air into the cabinet.

The mother board is pretty new (I bought it last sept).  That calculator thing was helpful and it said i needed around 450W of power.

I am going to rearange my files and not have so many drives in the computer which i guess could help if either it is heat or power that is my problem.  I currently have a raid set up with 4 drives, a operating drive and a large archive drive.

It is nice to have a raid set up but i think i will try and just have it on one drive for a while and do more backups instead.

[StockManiac]

Wattage calculators are usually way off from actual usage.

I have a pretty good system with quite a few peripherals (Dual core AMD, 2 GB RAM, CD player, DVD player, 3 hard drives, floppy disk, and at least one PCI card).  I have measured it using a Kill-A-Watt device (see here for details: http://www.amazon.com/P3-International-P4400-Electricity-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU) and it only uses around 150W on average (even during heavy usage).  This measurement also includes the LCD monitor.

I also measured a few PC servers at work and they ran between 175W and 200W with heavy loads.

850W power supply is HUGE.

I can guarantee that it isn't the power supply.

If you think that it is heat related, then run the PC without the case cover and see if it changes things.

[Mormegil]

If it does turn out to be a heat issue, and an open case helps, consider getting a new case or some serious case fans.

I've been pretty happy with a Cooler Master case I got (Centurion, I think).  Dropped my case temps at least 10 degrees (I was was running really hot - which lead to a video card burn out).

[melastmohican]

First of all you need to ask yourself what do you need.  There are many parameters but for you probably result ion and memory size would determine how comfortable you can work with new card. Do not forget monitor in this equation. You might spend tons of money on latest card just to figure out that your display cannot handle resolution. Unless you are going to render in 3D you might also do not need latest GPU which are designed for gamers mostly to provide highest frames per second output in 3D.

[leaf]

thanks for all the replys.

Yeah, i had considered the case.  The case is the oldest thing in the computer (i switched out the insides last fall with new parts but kept the case).  Perhaps that should be my next upgrade in the future.  I had read one review that the case i have runs pretty hot (i bought it second hand with my earlier computer).  It does have lots of fans though (which i had added to help with cooling after i first started having problems.)  I have two fans * in over the hard drives, one fan * in on the side.. and maybe one more below * in on the front.
then the cpu fan blowing stuff around inside, and only the power supply fan * out.

The inside is pretty clean of cables and such though so airflow shouldn�t be too much of a problem despite the number of drives.

[Pywrit]

Hi Leaf,

I just noticed no one asked about the video driver itself. Have you installed the latest driver? If not, try that. If you have, did the problem start afterwards? If so, then maybe reinstall the driver or try a previous version to see if that helps.

Also, I noticed you have a lot of intake fans, but only one exhaust fan. If the open case test works and you have an open slot, try installing an exhaust fan there to pull the hot air out. My experience with heat issues, however, is that they are fairly consistent. You start the computer and a 1/2 hour later, it shuts down. And I've found they tend to manifest not long after the computer starts up.

Also, if you've decided to upgrade your video card anyway, check out matrox video cards. Where Nvidia and ATI are both gamer oriented, Matrox is aimed at the higher end creation and design users. Think speed (Nvidia/ATI) Vs. Precision (Matrox). As a photographer, I would think you fall into the precision category. Of course, the prices are steep, but really no worse than a high end Nvidia/ATI card. I priced a Matrox Millenniun P650 128 MB card on pricegrabber.com at $230-284 USD.  If, however, you are like me and occasionally like to play one of the latest video games, go with Nvidia or ATI.

[leaf]

yeah the driver is pretty recent.  The card generally dies after about 30minutes of game playing - generally when the game is just getting heated up  
Otherwise it might die after a few hours of photoshop, for seemingly no reason but perhaps if i am moving the image around a lot and zooming in and out - maybe that gets the graphics card working hard??

for fans (I wrote the first post when I wasn't home) I have 2 exhaust fans plus the exhaust fan in the power supply
+ 4 fans going into the case.

So airflow really should be ok, but if the graphics card doesn't have a fan there could still be stagnant air around it.. (that is what i am thinking anyhow)

I guess i will know if the fan video card will help in a couple days.