Newer GPU Question

[Vietster1]

I am really curious about something, I was browsing video cards and I noticed that they are still selling Nvidia 8 and 9 series in PCI interface. Any idea why? I mean, considering the amount of pipeline offered in PCI, dont that kind of defeat the purpose? What is the purpose of having a 9500GT in a PCI slot. I just dont get it. I was browsing Craigslist and noticed that someone was selling a 2003 HP Walmart Christmas Bundle with a 9500GT in it. I had a 2005 Bundle myself, and that PC did not even begin to unlock my 8400GS. I am just wondering if they do that so that people with Department store computers can say they have a 9 series in their computer. With a Celeron...I finally graduated to my own built Athalon X2

[ShyguyXPC]

their weak cards and PCI suits them fine.

what's the point of putting a weak budget card into a slot it will never ever reach the maximum bandwidth in?

bad analogy, but its like putting a 3 cylinder engine from a geo metro into the engine bay of a Mack Truck.

what's the point?

granted a PCI version of a 9500GT might be reaching the maximum of PCI, might even be hindered by it some. but even PCI Express x1 would be enough for a 9500GT card (x1 PCIE bandwidth peak is more than double what PCI is, at 250MB/s)

with that said, Nvidia stopped making AGP cards altogether with the Geforce 8 series, so that leaves PCI for their lower cards and PCIE for all cards.

for Geforce 8 series there are no comparable cards to the 9500GT for PCI, I'm thinking they decided to make a 9500GT for PCI since they no longer support AGP, and with the plethora of extremely low end 8400 and 9400 series PCI cards, might make some extra cash having a beefier card for PCI for those stuck with PCI only or AGP+PCI based PC's. Look at the milking of the G92 GPU core? Nvidia debuted G92 with the 2 version of the Geforce 8 series only to release the 9 series which was the same as the last 8 series, and then smaller improvements on the G92, with the G92b for the 9800GTX+ (even the more current GTS 250, thats usually lotted with the GTX 200 series) is still a G92b core.

it basically comes down to profits. if they can breathe some last remaining life into their lower end 9 series by releasing a PCI version of their lowest budget "gaming" card, then so be it.

especially when they don't support AGP anymore which would of made more sense making a 9500 for that.

[Vietster1]

ShyGuy, you seem to be an expert on Nvidia Cards. So I am coming to you personally, or anyone else that may have any ideas about this problem. If your all familiar with Performance test 7... ok, I must backtrack. I uad a Celeron HP Computer. still do but dont use it. I I bought a Sparkle Video Card, Geforce 8400GS PCI for it. I got good graphic but of course the CPU wouldnt do much, Anyway, I finally upgraded from a Granny Walmart Christmas Bundle and graduated to an Athalon X2 5200. 2GB DDR2 Biostar Motherboard, Nforce 430Chioset. I am sure you are all familiar. Anyway, I had nothing for the PCIxE slot, so I decided to put my 8400GS PCI card from Sparkle computer..... Well, here is the deal. In performance Test 7 the 3d Graphics mark scores are as follows:: Simple: 131.2, Medium:42.1. Complex .68. These are rated in FPS's as you know. The 2D graphics just make me want to get a Barf Bucket. So here is what I did, We called Sparkle, paid to send the card back, they even told me that the Graphics were low on the complex. so they send me back a brand new card. I installed the thing and got the same Crap. Now, I uninstalled the drivers that were currently installed, (onboard was a 6150SE) and reinstalled the newest drivers to get this wonderful effect. So I did the same thing again, and installed the ones on the CD that came with it. I got the Complex up to 2.41. So To sum it up, I have a video card that gets its tail whipped by a 6150 onboard GPU, I cannot game for crap. (I know that this card was not for gaming, but I should still be able to game at low settings). So I ask you all, WHAT AM I DOING WRONG WITH THIS THING? I have messed around with the device settings, Nvidia control panel, I can take my 6100 Card that has half the memory out of my Celeron, and put it into this thing and get better complex graphics. Why is this card running slower than than a card that is 2 generations older, I know that this card sucks, But this card SUCKS!!! It is not my PCI ports, I have been on the phone with Biostar, the Onbard is completely disabled. There is no external power socket on this thing, the only place to put a wire into this card is for the fan, I have 2 fans on it powered by the IDE connector, the temp is 29 degrees. I am so sick over this I just want to cry. I have assembled over a hundred computers in my life since the days of the 486 and I feel like I am really going nuts over this.. This card should be able to perform much better than this, what do I have to do to unlock the potential of this thing?

[Vietster1]

I just had a brain storm, Though I have yet to try it, This Card is considered Passive cooling. Here is a good one for shyguy when he comes back on. It has a huge Black heatsink on it. I have 2 fans on this thing powered by the IDE cables. This card has a connector for a fan. I am just wondering, is it possible that this cards accelerated graphics are disabled until a fan is plugged into this little socket? In other words, If you dont have a fan plugged into the card, will it idle the acceleration so that I get crappy readings? This is the first Nvidia card I have had that diddnt already have a fan plugged into it. and is cooled externally. Straight from the PSU. I am wondering if this thing is designed to idle down the thing unless it detects a fan to properly cool it. Mine is connected to the IDE cable, so It has no way to detect it. Is this possibly my problem? Please Nvidia Gurus out there... HELP!!!

[Aaron_8015]

Doubt that fan thing is plauseable... should still run fine without fan plugged in (as long as it is cool enough).... I gather you have the latest drivers installed?

[cksboy15]

nope its passive cooling they underclock it to produce less heat. if you plug a fan in it won't run any faster.

[Vietster1]

Well, with the latest drivers, I was getting less than one FPS. If it is the fact that it is underclocked for the passive cooling, does this mean that this is why the card sucks? By the way, In the nvidia control panel the PCI bus reads 33Mhz. I thought that it would be 66. I just have to get a PCIe card that bus 2500mhz. Is this why I cannot get any good readings out of the card? Can the passive cooling setting be changed, Can you update the Bios in one of these cards?

[Vietster1]

Well, here is the deal, to alleviate any further stress, I removed that Sparkle Computer 8400GS from my rig, and I have vowed never to insert that thing into another slot again on anything I own. Though I have been wondering, is it the passive cooling nature of it that caused it to suck so bad? I mean, it couldnt be my PCI ports, I had a 6100 Card in it and it worked up to par. I just dont know what to think about it. I dont think there is anything wrong with the way I built the machine. If there was a ground not properly secured, it would have shown itself elsewhere. My brother in law is putting it into his Dell. We will see what we get.

The sick part here is, My 6150SE Nforce 430 runs a hell of alot better. even on left 4 dead!!

[pullmyfoot]

you wanna try splitting your posts into paragraphs? lol. That second one was like wow

and as far as I know they stopped making cards for the AGP socket with the 7800 series, which was high end then but is probably about the 8400GT/9400/9500GT speed now. then you take into consideration that the PCI socket is even older....

forgive me for my ignorance becasue i only skimmed the thread, but do you mean PCIe? there is a big difference, and almost all modern computers come with a PCIe socket as standard and all modern graphics cards use that interface.

[pullmyfoot]

Well, here is the deal, to alleviate any further stress, I removed that Sparkle Computer 8400GS from my rig, and I have vowed never to insert that thing into another slot again on anything I own. Though I have been wondering, is it the passive cooling nature of it that caused it to suck so bad? I mean, it couldnt be my PCI ports, I had a 6100 Card in it and it worked up to par. I just dont know what to think about it. I dont think there is anything wrong with the way I built the machine. If there was a ground not properly secured, it would have shown itself elsewhere. My brother in law is putting it into his Dell. We will see what we get.

The sick part here is, My 6150SE Nforce 430 runs a hell of alot better. even on left 4 dead!!

the 8400GS should be faster than the integrated graphics. passively cooled does not affect the performance. the reason why it can be passively cooled becasue its such a low-end card that id doesnt produce that much heat. either way there is something else wrong becasue your card should be faster than the 6100, even if not by much. ok actually I think it should be quite a decent bit faster becasue that thing is not only 3 whole generations older but is also integrated.

[Vietster1]

Pullmyfoot, your not pulling my leg on this. We put this thing into my brother in laws Dell with a Celeron 325, and got over twice the performance. I am trying to figure out what the hell went wrong. I had to leave, but my brither in law is doing a full fresh reinstall. even resetting the BIOS first, I am hoping this with a reinstall of XP does the trick. As of now, I am close to sending the motherboard back. It is almost like the pipeline on my PC from the PCI ports is not opened up. It is a Biostar Motherboard, have any ideas on a bios setting or something that could be interfering with the performance of the card>?

This is a brand new board, with a brand new CPU, Brand new everything other than the media drives...

[Vietster1]

Oh, I also realized that I have to use the drivers straight from Sparkle, the plain Nvidia drivers wont work, so we figured out part of the problem...

[ShyguyXPC]

I just had a brain storm, Though I have yet to try it, This Card is considered Passive cooling. Here is a good one for shyguy when he comes back on. It has a huge Black heatsink on it. I have 2 fans on this thing powered by the IDE cables. This card has a connector for a fan. I am just wondering, is it possible that this cards accelerated graphics are disabled until a fan is plugged into this little socket? In other words, If you dont have a fan plugged into the card, will it idle the acceleration so that I get crappy readings? This is the first Nvidia card I have had that diddnt already have a fan plugged into it. and is cooled externally. Straight from the PSU. I am wondering if this thing is designed to idle down the thing unless it detects a fan to properly cool it. Mine is connected to the IDE cable, so It has no way to detect it. Is this possibly my problem? Please Nvidia Gurus out there... HELP!!!

IDE cables are the data cables that connect IDE or PATA Optical drives or Hard drives to your motherboard, your thinking about the 4 pin Molex Power connectors coming from your Power supply.

but no, as cksboy mentioned its passively cooled, the fan connector on there is for if you want to add a fan to your card, or you install an after market heatsink with fan on it, won't make a difference whether its got a fan or not, as far as graphics performance goes, just that the card will run cooler with active air cooling is mainly the only difference.

an 8400GS is a pretty low end graphics card, only marginally better than most of Nvidia's current Onboard Graphics chips, with exception for maybe Nvidia's ION Mini ITX Platform onboard graphics that uses a variation of the 9400GT chips. which really aren't much of a step up from the 8400's either.

but since the 8400 is so low end, I honestly can't see how or why they would limit its maximum performance if no fan plugged in, the cards aren't running fast enough to generate enough heat to require active air cooling or Water cooling.

[Vietster1]

Thank you shyguy for that info, I am hoping you all can tell me why this is not going well for me, Here is a list of parts. By the way the RAM is this stick only. 2GB, it all registers. I am running XP pro on dual boot with XP64. I have tried Windows reinstalls, Fresh driver installs, and yes the OBV is shut off in the bios. I have tried everything, even flashed the bios. Now like I said, I put this thing card into my brother in laws Dell with a Celeron 325 and 512mb or RAM and got higher framerates all the way around. What should I do next. Please people, I am about to pull my hair out by the roots here. Please, look at my system configuration and tell me what needs to be adjusted, or should I ride the RMA train. I was thinking to say the hell with it and try a pci e card, but I still would feel uncomfortable if the PCI slots were not working correctly even if it worked...


SPARKLE Computer


Biostar MCP6P-M2+ Motherboard - v6.0, NVIDIA GeForce 6150, Socket AM2+, MicroATX, Audio, Video, 10/100 Ethernet LAN, USB 2.0, Serial ATA, RAID at TigerDirect.com

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Processor - 2.70GHz, Socket AM2, 1MB Cache, 1000MHz (2000 MT/s) FSB, Brisbane, Dual-Core, OEM at TigerDirect.com


Power Up Black ATX Mid-Tower Case with 450-Watt Power Supply at TigerDirect.com


Corsair XMS2 PC6400 800MHz 2GB DDR2 Desktop Memory Upgrade at TigerDirect.com


Ultra X-Wind Aluminum Socket K8/AM2 CPU Cooling Fan at TigerDirect.com

I think the media drives are irrevelant...

[ShyguyXPC]

looking at the manual for the motherboard, there are some BIOS options to check that might help, but not sure...

http://download.biostar.com.tw/uploa...S_090918_B.zip

you'll need Adobe Acrobat or Foxit Reader to read the PDF files.

when you unzip the file, there will be 2 PDF's, the BIOS one is the one to open and read.

once the Bios manual PDF is open,

Page 15 (discusses the Onboard VGA's Frame Buffer size, not sure if its even needed to be adjusted if Onboard is off, but couldn't hurt disabling that too and see what happens?)

Page 23 (disabling the onboard GPU, but you've covered that),

Page 29 (should set the InitDisplay to PCI if its not set already, I had to do something goofy with that on my old AMD AM2 Geforce 6100 Motherboard when I installed a Dedicated PCI express card as well, when having problems getting the board to recognize the PCIE card over the onboard or something, basically sets the Primary Display device for the PC to use, if Onboard is turned off, it should seek out next device, but who knows, it could be doing something goofy slowing down the card or something, in any case it should be set to PCI anways),



looked up the specs for PCI on that board, your motherboards Bios supports PCI 2.3, and the 8400GS PCI card is keyed for a universal design, so it should work in the slot fine, it should be a 32-bit PCI slot too, so its not a case of a 64-bit slot running 32-bit.

honestly I don't know what the deal is.

if none of those bios settings work, next step would be to make sure the Nvidia Chipset drivers are properly installed and all of them, except for onboard video (which should be using the same drivers as the 8400 Anyways), but make sure the chipsets drivers are up to date and all installed.

Latest Drivers from Nvidia for 8400GS (also the same ones on Sparkles site are 195.62's)

SPARKLE Computer

should be running those (XP 32-bit and/or 64-bit download)


All these drivers should be made sure they're installed:

BIOSTAR :: MCP6P M2+ :: Driver

IDE

SMBus

Ethernet

Audio

USB 2.0 Controller

SATA RAID (if you plan on using any RAID functions in the future)

SATA AHCI

no need for GPU or SMU drivers (latter only for Vista and Win7)

aside from that I have no idea what else to try other than switching to a better PCI Express card.

I noticed the Power Supply is an utterly cheap one, I'd honestly consider upgrading that thing, doing Google searches for PowerUp and can't find a thing, was looking for a website, and can't find one.

but if nothing else works I'd suggest try RMAing the video card and move up to a PCI Express one.

do you have any other PCI cards you could try, other than video cards, just to test and make sure the PCI slots are working fine (like a cheap PCI sound card, or something, to reassure yourself its the GPU thats not working right and not the slots)

[Vietster1]

alright shyguy, here is the deal, I think I figured it out. about 7 months ago, I bought the 8400GS PCI card. I put it into my HP. My sister wanted to charge her phone, so she plugged in my PC from the surge protector into an extention cord with a 3 to 2 prong adapter. It winds out that the thing was bad. If you would look at some of my earlier posts, you will see a dilemma I went through. Anyway, I got the power supply prob fixed and got it properly grounded. I changed PCI slots, and got better, but not great performance. anyhow, I retired the HP when I got this thing, and I pulled out the card, and put it into my machine. I noticed that the FPS were crappy. I was boggled, I pulled out the 8400, and put in a 6100a that I had laying around into the other slot and it seemed to match my onboard 6150se Nforce430. So I decided to put the 8400 in the same slot as the 6100a was in.

Not good, got the same thing. so I decided the PCI ports were ok, and sent the 8400GS back and ran it on the OBV till it came. Well bad news. I put the card into the slot, and I got the same damn results. so I pulled out the 8400, and put the 6100a back in. In both slots, I got the worse benchmark yet.

The verdict, what ever happened 6 or so months ago that screwed up the Video card with the improper grounding, apparantly proceded to mess up any PCI slot that the card went into.
This is not the definite cause, but, I am running out of options. Is this possible?
So I have 3 options, 1. say the hell with it, and use the OBV, 2. Rush out and buy a PCIxE card. Or 3. donate it to the rescue mission.

The sucky thing is, the new 8400 was put into a Dell 2400 with a Celeron 325, and I got higher framerates. Is that humanly possible.
By the way, Can anyone tell me the probable framerates with these two systems. I am refering to Performance Test 7.
1. My machine.
2. Dell Dimention, 2.53 Celeron 325. 512MBDDR. 865chipset. Stock PSU.
I really want to know the normal 3D scores.
Like I said, the Machine worked fine with the card in it, however, the gaming graphics were horrid. There were no real errors. I tried flashing the Bios, clearing it, reinstalling Windows XP with the OBV turned off, the chipset drivers were fine. I am about to look into a new board altogether. Please though, I really need some estimated PT7 Scores for 3D.

[JLK03F150]

When you swap video cards are you uninstalling the drivers, then reinstalling for the new card?
Did you also uninstall the 6150 onboard driver?
What version(s) of video driver are you using?
Have you tried a driver cleaner too?
Are there any yellow question marks in Device Manager?

Post a screenshot with all the CPUz tabs open as well as GPUz. Maybe we can spot something.

edit: I checked the Passmark site & they only maintain a CPU database, nothing for GPUs. The only comparison you got is the other PC where the 8400 worked better.
edit2:They do have a searchable GPU list! Doh!
PassMark Software - Video Card Benchmark Charts - Video Card Model List

[Vietster1]

Yeah JLK, actually, I did a full format and reinstall with the OBV disabled in the Bios altogether. Yeah, I have looked at the GPU benches, studied them, That is part of the theory I have here. Plus, the average GPU score from PT7 was like 134 or somthing like that. I installed the new card in that Dell I talked about, without uninstalling the drivers for the 6100a that was in it, I got a 120something, much higher than any benchmark I got from the AMDX2. I am satisfied with that score cause of the system it was on when it ran. The closest was the first test, then everything dropped and went south the first time I ran the complex graphics test. after the first complex Graphics test, the new card started working no differently than the old one. every PCI slot that I have plugged that first card into ever since has had nothing but problems. Same with the HP that You helped me with before JLK. The only one I have left in that machine is the bottom one. that one runs fine in the tests with the 6100a. I switch to the top 2 and get the same stuff.

I have based this on alot of hours of switching, benchmarking, and headaching. It kind of seems far fetched, but that original 8400GS somehow has managed to do something drastic to the PCI bus in every slot I put the thing in. The only ones that work are the ones that I never inserted that card into. How much more evidence do you want, what other tests do you want me to mention. Every hour that I have spent on this, (and there has been alot of them) points to a PCI slot munching Sparkle 8400GS PCI Video card. Sounds crazy, but I live in ohio, come here, look at the evidence, do your own tests and tell me different...... lol IT WONT HAPPEN. By the way, I am replacing the motherboard!!! thank God the 8400GS card is gone.....

[Vietster1]

Well, folks when the new motherboard comes, I shall let you know the results. By the way, I would really like to know some opinions as to the plausibility of my theory. Is it possible that my first 8400GS is destroying PCI Bus's? I know I have put out some whacky stuff here like the AMD loving virus I talked about a few weeks ago, Got that solved. (Virut is a S.O.B). and I was wrong about that. By the way. Love the cooling system you got there JLK!! I am going to put up some pics from my Celeron Case mod soon. finally got it pretty much done!!!

[JLK03F150]

I suppose it's possible the video card messed up the PCI slots, especially considering the power problems you were experiencing. Good luck with the upgrade!

I'll be firing the chiller up again this week & I have several P4's to play with (attempt to kill). lol

Looking forward to seeing your mods pics.