Doh! - The 8500GT PCI needs a least a 250W PSU - doens't work on my old GX1 (152 Watt) - Will have to change the box and get back to you !

BTW - It's got one of the biggest heat sinks I've ever seen on a card !!!

Ah well yes, thanks for trying to PM me. I'm following your posts with bated breath. Messeur Technofill posted some 3dmark03 results which are quite low (I get 2000 with a 6200) but I think that was with a pretty old (but I'm sure beautiful!) system.

I'm staggered you got those other cards to work with only 152 watts !

Does the GX1 take a standard ATX PSU ? If so it's well spent as you can take it with you . I found my dimension 2350 "seemed" faster after I got a 400W PSU. Everything seemed to be a bit faster and more responsive, but that could be the placebo effetct

I wanted to buy the X1550 or the X1300 video cards, but they don't have Win9x Drivers. The last ATI drivers is 6.2 and from what i can recalled, they don't have X1550 or X1300 support , so i bought the BFG Geforce 6200 256MB PCI which is pretty good!

I wish they sold the 8500 GT in the US, i sent sparkle a message, but don't believe they will get back to me.

Someone send sparkle a email about putting their PCI card in the USA.

You tried this link

http://www.sparkle.com.tw/customer.htm ?

They claim that their 2 US distributors are :
USA
Compusa.com
7795 W Flagler St. Suite 35 Miami, FL. 33144
Tel: +1-800-compusa
www.compusa.com
e-mail: web_order_returns@compusa.com
USA
TigerDirect.com
7795 W Flagler St. Suite 35 Miami,
FL. 33144
Tel: +1-800-800-8300
http://www.tigerdirect.com

However neither have that specific card listed. Might be worth emailing them though perhaps ?

the specific Sparkle product code for the 512 version is SF-PC85GT512U2 as far as I can see, but googling that does not seem to return any US websites

Powercolor's reply to Sparkle in low profil please... If you hate Nvidia, take the AMD'Direct X10 for PCI !!

I don't hate nVidia or ATi as much as I hate people who say " why don't you just spend the money on a new motherboard blah blah blah "

Thanks - does it take up 2 slots ? From the picture it looks as if the heatsink extends beyond the width a single slot ?

Hi Jives 11,
I Totally agree with you, I dislike too.
To answer, I think it almost takes 2 slots, but if somebody could confirm...

The powercolor card doesn't have win9x drivers, so i couldn't use it. And as i said, the 6.2. drivers from what i know, doesn't support that card, i think, not really sure.

I can however use the 8500 GT. I will try to contact compusa and tiger when i get the chance, would be nice to grab it, if we can. If not, i will just stick with 6200 OC 256 Card, and buy a powerful card for my secondary computer vista soon.

Pentium 4 2.79GHz
2GB GSkill RAM

My CPU is the weakest thing about my comp.
I don't know much about the 8500 but the X1550 is awesome mate. I run stalker and oblivion flawlessly, I'm going to download Crysis and see how it plays, on system requirements lab it says I meet the minimum specs.

I've stuck my 8500 GT on EBay as I've recently won a Dell GX270 so will try and get a low profile AGP or PCI

Sorry, won't be able to test this card chaps - but I will ship to the US

ive been researching for my computer dell 2350 and found x1300,x1550 and power color raedeon HD 2400 pro PCI cards i also found out that the x1300 and x1550 have xge versions also that makes them 30% faster and iam stumped on wich one to buy help a wb out

THE hd 2400 looks impressive I just don t know

i geuss the hd 2400 supports dx 10

just won an 8500GT PCI off ebay, not sure if it was yours fingerman ?

I'll let you all know when I get it and have run some tests. Which is the 3dmark that people prefer. I was using 3dmark03 as it gave a reasonable score whereas 05 would hardly run at all. I see 01 quoted quite a bit.

i also installed the beta of speedfan 4.34 and this returns no less than 3 temperature measurements for my 6200 PCI. one is labelled 'ambient' and appears to be set to zero, but the others are GPU showing 42 deg C idle, and core which is 36 deg C idle. I assume GPU may be the GPU and Core is the memory ? Impressive, I just need the P4 temperature to be dug out from the Dimension 2350 mobo

Damn man, i wish they sold the card in the US. I already sent emails to sparkle, but they are ignoring me. I will try sending a email to tiger direct and compusa soon and see can they get some over to the usa and maybe sell the card at 80 dollars

Sparkle 8500GT PCI came this morning. I'll install it today and run a 3dmark03 to see if it is significantly faster than a 6200, then post the results. 2019 was my previous personal best score

lol i remember years ago i had a Geforce 5200 PCI on my old pc

4911 is the Best 3dmark03 score so far with lastest production nVidia driver and settings set to performance. A few tests actually lookeed slightly slower i.e some of the Mother Nature scenario where you get some dynamic lighting.

the card is a bit different as during the install the system detected a PCI-to-PCI bridge device. Also when I use the PCI latency tool I only see the bridge and not the actual graphics card. I tried tweaking the PCI latency as the previous 5200/5500/6200 seemed to set the latency to 248 i.e grab it all for themselves.

Incidentally it's also double width with it's huge heatsink, so my double width blower I got last month no longer fits.

So , so far so good, but I won't put the 6200 up on ebay till we have some real world gaming experience with it.

I have a question, well has anyone tried the EVGA version of the Geforce 6200 256MB PCI card?

I'm seriously thinking about buying it and testing it out, because the BFG version its kinda ticking me off. First, the only driver that seems to be support and work is the 81.89, but the driver, second " wont let me shut off my computer, when i click shut down. 3rd, i cant even play NFS porsche unleashed, and yes i am serious. The driver wont let me play it, the game crashes right after the main menu screen.

The 81.89 is a bad driver, or the BFG Geforce 6200 version is a bad card. It can run games pretty good, but it seems like it is no stable driver for this card. So i'm going to buy the evga driver and see how it works, if i have the same problem which i don't believe i will, i'm just saying if i do, i will just looking forward to play the games which i cant play ( which i should btw, come on NFSPU ) when i buy vista with a ATI card.

Well compared to the PNY it looks as if the BFG is already overclocked. I couldn't get much more than 315Mhz out of mine before it became unstable. Your screen shot showed 350 out-of-the-box. It sounds perverse but have you tried underclocking it to , say 305 and see if you get some stability back