Palit Revolution 700 Review Comment Thread

[SKYMTL]

What can be said about this card? It was highly anticipated about two months ago but after running through the benchmarks, I have come crashing back to reality. Some say nothing beats silence but in an industry that is striving for performance per watt numbers and decreasing idle power consumption, this card is a failure. I almost feel bad saying that since it is quite harsh but the writing is on the wall folks.


You can read all the gory details here: http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...rd-review.html

I really wanted this card to succeed.

Please use this thread to post all of your comments, questions, rants and raves.

Think I'm being too harsh, let me know if there is something I missed!!

[sswilson]

Maybe the idea was to make it as big as one of the 2 PCB Nvidia cards? Dunno... seems strange that they decked it out with all that cooling but didn't increase the stock clocks.

Quick general Q though on ATI's Powerplay tech......

Did they ever come up with a way to turn it off, or have the drivers been improved to a point where folks aren't seeing the same stuttering issues they had when it was first incorporated? (Shows you how much FPS gaming I do.... :) ).

[Chilly]

Nah, I agree with you SKYMTL, while the extra ports, silence and lower core temps may appeal to some, to the majority of people I'd consider it a dud. Too expensive, takes up way too much room, and not so great warranty when compared to most other 4870X2's IMO.

[slntdth93]

D-sub connector is outdated and should have had
2 DVI, 2 display port + adapters in my opinion

[Eagle Eye]

Great review sky I'll be honest I skipped through the balance of the benchmarks, although I did notice that there was 1920x1200 results included you'll make Rjbarker very happy. A shame about the overclocking I would of like to see some better clocks, must of been a little frustrating especially with such a beast of a cooler to work with.

I was pretty shocked by the idle powerconsumption is there any reasonable explanation for that or is it the additional fans and display ports?

Chilly your comment sums it up in a heartbeat.

EE

[bojangles]

I thought that HWC was assisting Palit for making better products? Did they just forget about your opinions? The last card they made also had the same power issues. They need to start listening to the reviewers. Also, it's time to start a better warranty before XFX takes over the ATI market.

This was sent from my new ipod!

[SKYMTL]

Originally Posted by sswilson

Quick general Q though on ATI's Powerplay tech......

Did they ever come up with a way to turn it off, or have the drivers been improved to a point where folks aren't seeing the same stuttering issues they had when it was first incorporated? (Shows you how much FPS gaming I do.... :) ).

ATI seems to rarely improve features of their drivers. Granted, there is finally fan control after a year of asking by users and reviewers alike but that took about a year to implement so imagine how long it wil take for PowerPlay to become a properly functional and user-controllable function.

[SKYMTL]

Originally Posted by Eagle Eye

I was pretty shocked by the idle powerconsumption is there any reasonable explanation for that or is it the additional fans and display ports?

The fans would take a very small amount of power. Say if a fan takes 0.50A (alot for an 80mm fan) and its power is drawn at 12V. That means it will consume a whole 6W at full speed.

I highly doubt that has much to do with the overall power consumption.

[SKYMTL]

Originally Posted by bojangles

I thought that HWC was assisting Palit for making better products? Did they just forget about your opinions? The last card they made also had the same power issues. They need to start listening to the reviewers. Also, it's time to start a better warranty before XFX takes over the ATI market.

Many of us can talk until we are blue in the face but in the end it is the engineers who put these things together. Personally, I think all they had to do was give this card a 50Mhz overclock on the core and fix idle power consumption. If that would have been done, the Revolution would have been a pretty good card...if it was availabile.

[SKYMTL]

Originally Posted by Eagle Eye

Hey Sky how would increasing the core 50Mhz fix the idle power consumption? Did I miss something related to this in the review?

EE

Why would an increase in the core speed push idle power consumption down?

It should also be noted that PowerPlay IS working with this card it seems as the cores read 507Mhz when at idle.