Videocard length

[tegirinenashi]

What's up with ridiculously long videocards?

Here is gigabyte GTX 1070 compared to zotac 970, on top of the case where I was going to upgrade videocard. It is ridiculously long. Wasn't GTX 9XX -> 10XX supposed to be a process shrink (28->14 mm)? Why do they still manufacture those monstrosities, are pc vendors completely out of touch with reality?

 

[Flogger23m]

Because when we game we don't want it to sound like we're standing on a runway of an international airport. Get a bigger case. I wouldn't want to screw around in something the size of two shoe boxes.

 

[DrLobotomy]

Gotta have something to show for all that cash outlay. Happiness is measured in inches.

 

[Elf_Boy]

Gotta have something to show for all that cash outlay. Happiness is measured in inches.

That's why I am such a happy guy.


Thermal dissipation is the #1 big issue of computers. Finding a way to make all the heat go away or get turned back to useful energy would make any 100 of a Bill Gates rich.

 

[tegirinenashi]

No, getting bigger box in the world of shrinking die chips is a moronic solution. FYI mobile version of GTX 1080 is within 10% of the desktop part, so I challenge the need in behemoth PC components.

For that matter, why NVidia needs "partners"? (Same question to AMD, if they were relevant). They can't solder their chips to PCB, or are they out of cardboard packages?

 

[Ocellaris]

What's up with ridiculously long videocards?

Here is gigabyte GTX 1070 compared to zotac 970, on top of the case where I was going to upgrade videocard. It is ridiculously long. Wasn't GTX 9XX -> 10XX supposed to be a process shrink (28->14 mm)? Why do they still manufacture those monstrosities, are pc vendors completely out of touch with reality?

The reality is people perceive larger coolers to be better.

 

[Flogger23m]

No, getting bigger box in the world of shrinking die chips is a moronic solution. FYI mobile version of GTX 1080 is within 10% of the desktop part, so I challenge the need in behemoth PC components.

For that matter, why NVidia needs "partners"? (Same question to AMD, if they were relevant). They can't solder their chips to PCB, or are they out of cardboard packages?

It comes down to quality. I want more quality than you, and apparently most others do as well. I'm sure they'll come out with a small form factor hurricane sounding version eventually. The rest of us want to hear our games, not our GPUs, when we play.

 

[Hellstoaster]

The size of a video card with it's cooler has very little correlation to the chip within. My PNY GTX 1080 cards are the exact same length as my PowerColor Red Devil RX480's for example. There is no reason for the 480's to be that big other than they wanted to show off. If you're going to buy a card you should probably check out the dimensions of the thing before ordering it. You can't just assume a chip on a smaller process is going to result in a smaller card.

 

[primetime]

with only 2 fans on the card is does look like it could have been shortened lol.....But look into the card before you buy it, cause I figure the majority of us use at least a mid size case. (so really most of us dont need smaller cards). Also i think that 970 is one of the smaller ones out of the bunch.

 

[thesmokingman]

with only 2 fans on the card is does look like it could have been shortened lol.....But look into the card before you buy it, cause I figure the majority of us use at least a mid size case. (so really most of us dont need smaller cards). Also i think that 970 is one of the smaller ones out of the bunch.

Yea that Zotac 970 is very tiny, only thing smaller are the mini size cards. I had a Zotac 970 that did 1500mhz+. That size really belies its prowess.

 

[limitedaccess]

The majority of the DIY and custom builder/boutique OEM market is not very strictly space constrained for add in boards these days. Hence why AiBs will mostly be designing with those constraints (or lack thereof in this case) in mind.

There are smaller cards available but because there is a less of a market priority for them there is of course less selection.

One persons "quiet" is another persons "hurricane." Noise tolerance levels vary due to different individuals and their environment.

Efficiency gains via new processes can be leveraged for either more performance or lower power usage, it does not inherently mean that new GPUs will be lower power.

The mobile parts are lower TDP than desktop hence the lower performance. Also it isn't a linear relationship, in other words an extra 10% performance for desktop comes at more than 10% power consumption.

 

[BinarySynapse]

Given an equal number of transistors, smaller process dies have less surface area to get heat out than larger process dies do. So the cooler has to be able to spread as much heat (or more) away from the die faster than it had to for the larger process die. That means the cooler really can't get any smaller, and depending on the circumstances it may need to be larger with more heat pipes and fans.

There's also the other non-GPU components (mosfets, vram, support chips, etc) that need to be cooled.

 

[ProfessorUtopia]

Because when we game we don't want it to sound like we're standing on a runway of an international airport. Get a bigger case. I wouldn't want to screw around in something the size of two shoe boxes.

I don’t see the need for condescension. As technology progresses, it’s perfectly reasonable to expect to be able to do more in a smaller space. My current build is the first Micro ATX rig I’ve created, and the only “sacrifice” I had to make was to have fewer unused PCI Express slots.

SFF cards tend to come out significantly later than their full-size brethren. That’s probably mostly a reflection of demand, but development time to ensure the cooler design meets expectations may also be a factor.

 

[Flogger23m]

I don’t see the need for condescension. As technology progresses, it’s perfectly reasonable to expect to be able to do more in a smaller space. My current build is the first Micro ATX rig I’ve created, and the only “sacrifice” I had to make was to have fewer unused PCI Express slots.

SFF cards tend to come out significantly later than their full-size brethren. That’s probably mostly a reflection of demand, but development time to ensure the cooler design meets expectations may also be a factor.

True but it has not been the case for GPUs since the beginning. They've gotten bigger over time. My AGP era cards, FX5700, X700, 7600 have all enlarged. And they have been getting larger and larger ever since. It would have been very noteworthy if this generation cut sizes down to circa 2007, when many cards were single slot and much shorter. And noise/quality is a priority for me. I will take a slightly larger PC if it means I can game with less noise.

Now if they can keep noise levels on par and cut the size in half, I would be very excited. But this has simply not been the case for well over a decade.

 

[thesmokingman]

^^True. The Zotac 970 in the OP, while its very small it is not surprising that it simply cannot handle the heatload of the 970. When I clocked mine to over 1500mhz it was on water. The stock cooler was/is woefully inadequate.

 

[Armenius]

What's up with ridiculously long videocards?

Here is gigabyte GTX 1070 compared to zotac 970, on top of the case where I was going to upgrade videocard. It is ridiculously long. Wasn't GTX 9XX -> 10XX supposed to be a process shrink (28->14 mm)? Why do they still manufacture those monstrosities, are pc vendors completely out of touch with reality?

Video card lengths are advertised by the manufacturers for a reason. You need to pay attention to them.

As to why: ryan_975 gave the best answer above. Aside from that, PCB lengths are going to vary if the AIB manufacturer deviates from the reference design.

Gigabyte has a mini ITX version of the GTX 1070, just don't expect it to clock like the full size one in your pic or to run as cool and/or quiet.
GIGABYTE - Graphics Card - NVIDIA - PCI Express Solution - GeForce® GTX 10 Series - GeForce® GTX 1070 Mini ITX OC

 

[H-street]

Lol I had the same question. I got an msi 1060 and not only was it longer than my 290x but it was taller as well. They actually made the pcb taller!! But when looking at the "extra" pcb I don't see any lanes at all. Ridiculous

You can see the extra height here
GeForce GTX 1060 ARMOR 6G OC | MSI USA | Graphics card - The world leader in display performance

 

[Armenius]

Lol I had the same question. I got an msi 1060 and not only was it longer than my 290x but it was taller as well. They actually made the pcb taller!! But when looking at the "extra" pcb I don't see any lanes at all. Ridiculous

You can see the extra height here
GeForce GTX 1060 ARMOR 6G OC | MSI USA | Graphics card - The world leader in display performance

MSi uses larger fans to move more air. In general you'll get the same amount of cooling at a lower RPM, and thus quieter. In this case the card is that big because of the cooling solution alone.

 

[SvenBent]

thinking die shrinks is going to affect the PCB size much?
The chip area is like 1x1 inch of even that big. Shrinking that piece is going to influence the entire card by how much ?

It like complaining your mini cooper can take in a diesel truck engine cause you want to haul some big load.

it was your decision to get a crappy case ( for this purpose)

 

[tegirinenashi]

This is not the first PC I assembled. I started with ATX cases 1995-2005, but progressively felt that having such large cases is like throwback from 1980s. I downsized to micro ATX in 2005, but still thought that mATX take more space than it is actually worth. (Unlike most of people here showing their manhood, I keep the case out of sight.) Therefore, I butchered Thermaltake full ATX case to 11"x11"x8". I made it to accommodate micro (not mini) motherboard, which is not trivial (PS is fit by ditching its enclosure). And before you bring "inadequate" volume, I mention that there is one 14 cm fan in front of the case taking care of proper ventilation.

In a word, it is a piece of art. As you see, I put more effort into this than those Gigabyte designers, who reduced the number of fans from 3 to 2, but apparently didn't bother to make graphics card PCB shorter.

 

[Flogger23m]

This is not the first PC I assembled. I started with ATX cases 1995-2005, but progressively felt that having such large cases is like throwback from 1980s. I downsized to micro ATX in 2005, but still thought that mATX take more space than it is actually worth. (Unlike most of people here showing their manhood, I keep the case out of sight.) Therefore, I butchered Thermaltake full ATX case to 11"x11"x8". I made it to accommodate micro (not mini) motherboard, which is not trivial (PS is fit by ditching its enclosure). And before you bring "inadequate" volume, I mention that there is one 14 cm fan in front of the case taking care of proper ventilation.

In a word, it is a piece of art. As you see, I put more effort into this than those Gigabyte designers, who reduced the number of fans from 3 to 2, but apparently didn't bother to make graphics card PCB shorter.

Not likely. If you have problems with people seeing your PC then you really need to rethink who you associate with. Fact is myself and many others have a massive disdain for obscenely loud GPUs and computers. A dinky cooler simply isn't sufficient these days. Silent is more important than size for most. Besides, a mid tower isn't massive. If you can't fit a mid tower into your residence you probably have more things you need to worry about space wise.

And if push comes to shove, there are mini versions of the card already out. Nice and small, and likely very loud.

 

[RazorWind]

The additional power regulation components that board partners are using to improve overclocking performance take up space on the board. If the reference design didn't leave any space for this, then board has to get physically bigger. The nVidia Founders Edition 1070 design has five power phases for the GPU. The Gigabyte Windforce 1070 has eight. Look at a photo of the board - there's no wasted space in there. Whether or not the extra power phases are necessary or effective is debatable (JayzTwoCents seems to think that the FE cards overclock the best), but they're there, and they take up space on the board.

 

[chenw]

Process node shrink also does not automatically mean smaller cards/chips, for GPU's, it means more transistors in the same amount of space as well as the same amount of transistors in a smaller amount of space.

Desktop CPU's hasn't been getting any smaller for example, and so the cooling must increase.

Oh, and not everything were shrinking either. Anyone remember Pentium II's? THAT was a monstrosity in CPU.

 

[Einzige]

Personally I like huge gfx cards, cases, cpu coolers, etc. I just love my machine looking like a silicone monster.

 

[BinarySynapse]

Process node shrink also does not automatically mean smaller cards/chips, for GPU's, it means more transistors in the same amount of space as well as the same amount of transistors in a smaller amount of space.

Desktop CPU's hasn't been getting any smaller for example, and so the cooling must increase.

Oh, and not everything were shrinking either. Anyone remember Pentium II's? THAT was a monstrosity in CPU.

The Pentium II itself was actually pretty small. The size of the SECC package was mostly due to the PCB that allowed the L2 cache chips and backside bus to be moved off the motherboard.

 

[DanNeely]

True but it has not been the case for GPUs since the beginning. They've gotten bigger over time. My AGP era cards, FX5700, X700, 7600 have all enlarged. And they have been getting larger and larger ever since. It would have been very noteworthy if this generation cut sizes down to circa 2007, when many cards were single slot and much shorter. And noise/quality is a priority for me. I will take a slightly larger PC if it means I can game with less noise.

Now if they can keep noise levels on par and cut the size in half, I would be very excited. But this has simply not been the case for well over a decade.

Card length for reference designs has been broadly stable at about 10.5" for about a decade (length of a full size ATX mobo). AGP era cards were smaller because they were much lower power (eg your 7600 GT was 40W, the flagship of the generation the 7950 was a 65W card); you can still find cards in that power range under the x40/50 performance tiers. Flagship cards are much bigger to handle the extra cooling at low volume levels gaming laptops are much louder to compensate for the smaller heatsinks and fans.

In the medium term, the best hope for smaller high performance cards is the proliferation of HBM across the upper tiers of consumer GPUs. Dropping the discrete GDDR chips allows a PCB about 1/3 smaller (eyeballed size change) without having to do any of the other (generally cost adding) miniaturization used to make MXM modules for laptops. OTOH keeping them cool without needing significantly faster and louder fans is going to be a concern unless the card makers use AIO water cooling like AMD did with some of their previous generation cards.

 

[RazorWind]

What's up with ridiculously long videocards?

Here is gigabyte GTX 1070 compared to zotac 970, on top of the case where I was going to upgrade videocard. It is ridiculously long. Wasn't GTX 9XX -> 10XX supposed to be a process shrink (28->14 mm)? Why do they still manufacture those monstrosities, are pc vendors completely out of touch with reality?

Newegg publishes the physical dimensions of the cards right there on their website. If you knew this was going into a system where size is an issue, why did you not consider it before purchasing? It's your responsibility to do this, as a system integrator. If you'd prefer not to, there are plenty of vendors such as Dell, HP and Lenovo, among many others, who will be happy to do this for you for a modest markup.

Also, since you're committed now, you might consider returning the normally sized 1070, and getting one of these handy-dandy mini ones instead:
GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1070 Mini ITX OC GV-N1070IXOC-8GD Video Card-Newegg.com

 

[tegirinenashi]

Here is the product page -- the card looks deceptively small from that angle. Before that I had 650Ti Boost followed by 970 in the same case, so it simply slipped my mind that card length might be an issue.

Power consumption for 1070 (<150w) is lower than 970 (<200w). From that perspective, NVidia "partners" produced over engineered POS, which admittedly appeals to a certain consumer base. What is equivalent of "audiophile" in video games hobby? The ones which operate adjectives instead of numbers, e.g. "...likely very loud." Progressing more into dick swinging competition ("...can't fit a mid tower into your residence..."), let me mention that the biggest manhood shower of all is Apple. And that company philosophy is that the PC box has no place on a table (or under it) -- it is demoted to the back of the monitor.

Once again, when ATX standard was developed, the world was a different place. An enthusiast user was supposed to have a box with
- 1-2 CDROMs
- 1-3 3.5" hard drives
- multiple PCI extension cards
Today, one can have a compelling system with no optical reader and single 2.5" SSD, which can be inconspicuously mounted to any case wall. In other words, this whole metal cage in front of standard case is just garbage, so the length dimension can be shortened 3-5" without any sacrifice.

 

[Armenius]

Here is the product page -- the card looks deceptively small from that angle. Before that I had 650Ti Boost followed by 970 in the same case, so it simply slipped my mind that card length might be an issue.

Power consumption for 1070 (<150w) is lower than 970 (<200w). From that perspective, NVidia "partners" produced over engineered POS, which admittedly appeals to a certain consumer base. What is equivalent of "audiophile" in video games hobby? The ones which operate adjectives instead of numbers, e.g. "...likely very loud." Progressing more into dick swinging competition ("...can't fit a mid tower into your residence..."), let me mention that the biggest manhood shower of all is Apple. And that company philosophy is that the PC box has no place on a table (or under it) -- it is demoted to the back of the monitor.

The pictures on that page have nothing relative for scale, so you wouldn't have been able to deduce the length of the card at first glance anyway. However: knowing that the length of a PCI-E x16 card is roughly 5.6" from I/O plate to the end of the retaining clip, we can deduce from the head-on picture that the card is at least twice that length. Meaning this card is around 11.2" long. Looking at the specs the card is indeed 11.22" long.

 

[Flogger23m]

The pictures on that page have nothing relative for scale, so you wouldn't have been able to deduce the length of the card at first glance anyway. However: knowing that the length of a PCI-E x16 card is roughly 5.6" from I/O plate to the end of the retaining clip, we can deduce from the head-on picture that the card is at least twice that length. Meaning this card is around 11.2" long. Looking at the specs the card is indeed 11.22" long.

My first thought when viewing this thread. If there are no physical dimensions I eye ball it by looking at the length of the PCI-E and how tall the cooler is from the I/0 plate.

 

[BinarySynapse]

Here is the product page -- the card looks deceptively small from that angle. Before that I had 650Ti Boost followed by 970 in the same case, so it simply slipped my mind that card length might be an issue.

Power consumption for 1070 (<150w) is lower than 970 (<200w). From that perspective, NVidia "partners" produced over engineered POS, which admittedly appeals to a certain consumer base. What is equivalent of "audiophile" in video games hobby? The ones which operate adjectives instead of numbers, e.g. "...likely very loud." Progressing more into dick swinging competition ("...can't fit a mid tower into your residence..."), let me mention that the biggest manhood shower of all is Apple. And that company philosophy is that the PC box has no place on a table (or under it) -- it is demoted to the back of the monitor.

Once again, when ATX standard was developed, the world was a different place. An enthusiast user was supposed to have a box with
- 1-2 CDROMs
- 1-3 3.5" hard drives
- multiple PCI extension cards
Today, one can have a compelling system with no optical reader and single 2.5" SSD, which can be inconspicuously mounted to any case wall. In other words, this whole metal cage in front of standard case is just garbage, so the length dimension can be shortened 3-5" without any sacrifice.

There's more than how much power the card consumes. There's how fast that power needs to be dissipated (smaller process dies need to get rid of heat faster) and how many other components need cooling (more power regulation "phases" means more hot running mosfets). One thing not mentioned yet, but has the biggest impact on PCB design is signal and power routing. Some signals need a certain length trace to work properly, power circuit traces need to be wide enough to handle the load put on them. And some signals can't be next to others.


As far as your impression of what a computer was supposed to have in 1995, most I worked on had 1 hard drive, 1 CD-ROM drive, a 3.5 floppy drive, and 1-4 PCI/ISA cards for video, audio, and networking, all of which fit just fine in the same space as two of today's GPUs. Back then there was no such thing as SLI/Crossfire or even dual-slot cards. Were there circumstances that require using all 7 slots and stuffing every drive bay you had available? Absolutely, but that's no different than today.

 

[SpongeBob]

I was looking at some of those Mini 1060's what are you really losing over the large cards besides an extra fan?

 

[tegirinenashi]

There's more than how much power the card consumes. There's how fast that power needs to be dissipated (smaller process dies need to get rid of heat faster)...

Power is energy per time unit. In other words "how fast" is already incorporated into the power concept. Certainly, you didn't mean dividing power by time once more -- that "power acceleration" would be nonsensical.

I get a feeling that you are taking about thermal flows, and that you imply that somehow the newer 14 nm process has more trouble dissipating the heat (compared to old 28 nm). Then, the heat flows along temperature gradient and eventually gets dissipated. The rate of heat dissipation is still the same as heat production, in other words the same as consumed power, but if I read your message correctly, you want increasing the temperature gradient to counteract increased thermal resistance. This would be a good argument if not the ever shrinking performance difference between mobile and desktop video cards. Today, the gap is around 5-10%, which means that thermals hit the wall, and that having a huge thermal sink would give negligible performance benefits compared to a normal one.

 

[BinarySynapse]

Now you're nitpicking over semantics.

Have you seen any of those GTX 1080 laptops? They're monsters, and not because they fit more tech in there. They have to be big because of how much cooling hardware has to go into them, and even then, they're loud as hell, and they're expensive.

 

[DrLobotomy]

Now you're nitpicking over semantics.

Have you seen any of those GTX 1080 laptops? They're monsters, and not because they fit more tech in there. They have to be big because of how much cooling hardware has to go into them, and even then, they're loud as hell, and they're expensive.

And hot on the balls!!

 

[Hellstoaster]

Now you're nitpicking over semantics.

Have you seen any of those GTX 1080 laptops? They're monsters, and not because they fit more tech in there. They have to be big because of how much cooling hardware has to go into them, and even then, they're loud as hell, and they're expensive.

Most of the 1080 laptops are spec'd (in terms of weight and dimensions) similar to the last gaming laptop I bought. Years ago I bought a Dell XPS with dual 8800 GTX cards in SLi. The thing was enormous. It was a shade over 2" thick and weighed in at almost 12 pounds. I can't criticize the 1080 laptops because "gaming" laptops with SLi have been absolute monstrosities for years...

And hot on the balls!!

and hot on the balls...

 

[DanNeely]

The pictures on that page have nothing relative for scale, so you wouldn't have been able to deduce the length of the card at first glance anyway. However: knowing that the length of a PCI-E x16 card is roughly 5.6" from I/O plate to the end of the retaining clip, we can deduce from the head-on picture that the card is at least twice that length. Meaning this card is around 11.2" long. Looking at the specs the card is indeed 11.22" long.

another indicator should've been the face on picture. The cooler looks to be about normal in proportions but you can see how it sticks up well above the height of the IO plate; making it clear that it's an oversized cooler. Theoretically that should translate to higher overclocks or quieter operation...

 

[Flogger23m]

I was looking at some of those Mini 1060's what are you really losing over the large cards besides an extra fan?

Cooling and noise. Probably overclock potential as well. My MSI GTX 970 Gaming OCed about 10-12% which is a big gain, for what is essentially the same price as a mini version. After I bought my GTX 560ti I told myself I am never going back to stock coolers. They're far too loud, and can reach rather high temps on the hottest days with stock fan profiles.