Size matters

... and sometimes smaller is better, because 10 inch is just too much. I'm talking of graphics cards, of course. What did you think, you pervert! :)

When I bought my computer a year and a half ago, the graphics card I took was decent, but already at the time not high-end, a GeForce 9800 GTX (1 GB). The idea was to update it later. But when I bought a GeForce GTX 275 eight months later, the upgrade was a complete failure: It turned out that this new generation of GeForce cards was significantly longer than previous generations. The GTX 275 was 26 cm long (over 10 inch), and I just had 24 cm space in my mid-tower. So I admitted defeat, and put the new card in my wife's computer.

When this summer I ran the Final Fantasy XIV benchmark and my computer scored not so hot, I started to wonder how I could find a graphics card update without the size problem. And then I read a glowing review of Nvidia's latest graphics card, the GeForce GTX 460 (1GB). And it turns out that this card is only 21 cm long (8.5 inch). So today I went and bought one of these for 200 bucks. And yay, it fit!

On a pure graphics benchmark the new GTX 460 is twice as fast as the 9800 GTX. And on the Final Fantasy XIV benchmark my scores improved by about a third, from 1890 to 2443 in high resolution. And as I'm now slightly better than the recommended system requirements, I should have no problems getting that game to run when it comes out end of September. So now I'm happy with my computer again, and think I won't need to upgrade it or buy a new one before next year.