Glory pics of my new card. Despite my denouncing nVIDIA, I was left with little choice since the HD 6950/6970 cards were either sold out or way overpriced. I later found out (much to my dismay) that 1) the VRAM chips had no contact with the heatsink and didn't even have heat spreaders (eww!), 2) RivaTuner wouldn't work with it (I had to use MSI Afterburner instead and sacrifice some features), 3) the count of temperature gauges plummeted from 7 on my previous card (Core, VRAM, Shader, Display IO, VRM1, VRM2, VRM3) to just 1 (Core). Oh boy. At least it's far quieter, though.
http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/10/28 ... IMG220.jpg
The one on top is my dead card. Pretty design and all, but the fan made my rig sound like it was harboring a jet in it.
http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/10/28 ... IMG222.jpg
Another angle.
http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/10/28 ... IMG223.jpg
Side profile. I really like it that the old card had gold-plated DVI connectors, they contrast well with the gunmetal port/vent cover (or whatever it's called). The new one looks fairly plain in comparison. :/
http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/10/28 ... IMG225.jpg
http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/10/28 ... IMG226.jpg
The new card, happily seated in its new home. Please excuse the wiring, I'm no expert at aesthetics. That awkward obelisk-like chunk of stiff cardboard is the result of my paranoia that the CPU heatsink's weight would eventually warp the motherboard.
Edit:
I got RivaTuner to at least recognize the card now by modifying RivaTuner.cfg to add device ID entries for the card, it's able to query the GPU core temperature now but it still fails to see the amount of VRAM available.