James and the Giant Corn Genetics: Studying the Source Code of Nature

April 4, 2009

New Graphics Card

Filed under: Uncategorized — James @ 11:53 am

In one week I’ve had my car and windows PC die on me. Last night the parts I needed to fix the computer came, and this morning it’s back up and running. I’m going to make an attempt at the car on Monday or Tuesday depending on when the equipment I need arrives (thank you Amazon!).

I thought it was interesting to look at the physical differences of the two graphics cards. Don’t worry, no jumble of technical specs coming.

My previous graphics card is the blue one on the right, and the new one is the red one of the left. Notice the difference? The old one is a beast of a machine. Its big, powerful, and has a frankly ridiculous looking heat sink. My newer acquisition is about a year newer, but rather than get a bigger, more powerful card, I was able to get one that was only about 90% as powerful, can output to HDMI (in case ever need to hook this computer up to the TV), is passively cooled (meaning less noise and less energy), and costs about a third of what I payed for the last one!

Just goes to show how you can do things differently when you focus on quiet, power efficient PCs instead of wanting the biggest baddest PC to brag to your friends about.

Now a friend of mine who shall go unnamed has a really cool desktop computer that probably beats all of my computers combined (for video gaming). He has to leave the side off his computer case or the whole thing overheats. Would you believe he almost never even turns it on because his wife doesn’t like what it does to their electrical bill? ‘Nuf said…

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