Posted: February 14th, 2003
Written by: Justin "The Sheriff" Woods

Chaintech Evolution Event 2003

On the Nvidia front, Chaintech had a non-functioning GeForce FX card on display. The cooling solution Chaintech has developed looks promising. They use a technology called "Dual Gas Turbine Technology" in tandem with "Super conducting Heat Pipe Technology". What does all this fancy terminology equate to? Well, Chaintech is touting 30db fan noise and a 30% cooler GPU. It also has a 25db fan in the works, so look for news on that development in the near future. This fan solution is about 50% quieter than the 70db of the standard cooling you'll see on the reference boards coming from Nvidia. On a side note, the engineers report a 3% drop in overall case temperature due to this fan, and that can only help. We weren't able to test this finding, but will hopefully be able to when the cards come in for review.

Fan Technology

Close up, blue LEDs make me happy

From what I could tell, Chaintech's solution isn't any noisier than the Ti4600 fan, which is bearable. Then again, on my test system, you can't hear anything except the blow-dryer (Volcano 9) I use to cool the 2.4 GHz P4. I sure hope Nvidia can get good yields on the GeForce FX Ultra chips, as I would hate to see this card disappear (insert fanboy accusations here), though ATI is promising a faster, cheaper solution to the FX cards (from the benchmarks I have seen, the 9700 Pro may already be that solution). Again, only time will tell.

Viewed from the side

Earlier I mentioned that the Ultra version of the GeForce FX may never see the light of day, I certainly hope this isn't true. I have heard rumblings of low yields, which may prevent Nvidia from shipping GPUs to anyone but first tier partners. This would leave companies like BFG and Chaintech holding the bag in terms of the amount of marketing they have spent. In any even, at best, we'll see the Ultra in mass, worst case, we'll see a very limited shipment and it will become a collector's item. Let's hope Nvidia can pull this one out, with ATI chomping at the bit, one slip and you might see a lot more "Will work for framerate" signs at local intersections in the coming months.

Viewed from the back

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