Hello all, I'm back online again after the power went down because of Hurricane Ike. I recommend ordering the Sparkle 8500GT online instead of getting these other cards and waiting a few extra days to receive your video card as opposed to simply driving to the store and getting it. Reason being is that the Sparkle 8500GT is much more powerful than those other cards and you will get much better results in your applications from this than the other cards. I used to own one and I can vouch that it is the absolute best PCI video card available today (until Albatron makes it's 8600GT available to the US).

Yea the 8500GT is clearly the best choice right now.

I would love to be able to purchase a 8500 gt but the sad fact is I dont have a credit card so I have to go with what is near me.

I think they take money orders, but you know just grab the powercolor2400. You can run games better, because of your CPU which is pretty good. So go for it and test out some games and see how it goes.

NEW ACQUISITION

Great card, haven't played anything yet but i will post some results soon... I only got 256MB right now but 2GB are comming....

DIAMOND HD 2400PRO



PS: By the SS's i saw i think bandwitdth is a little too low maybe i do some OC when i get more cooling right now in this DELL 170L is hard to get a fan in there.

There is no way to increase the bandwidth on that card to equal a 128-bit card because it is 64-bit interface, no matter how much you OC, the bandwidth will not equal that of a 128-bit video card. I noticed slight improvements in bandwidth stats when I OC'ed my 8500GT, so it is not like you can't improve it at all, but I highly recommend starting with the Sparkle 8500GT and OC'ing that card instead of a much less powerful one.

Like tha general said, if the online store takes money orders and you don't have a credit card, then by all means do that for a Sparkle 8500GT. The PCI bus interface is wretchedly slow to start with and putting anything less in your PCI slot only PC will result in substandard application performance IMO.

I am using a FX 5500 and it is depressing how much far less powerful it is compared to the 8500GT, but that is exactly why I sold it, so I couldn't play video games like I really wanted to and to force myself to focus on other pursuits for the time being.

I might do some awesome tweaks and mods to this PC later to get it to run Oblivion on full settings, but I'm focusing on my work for now.

Are you sure you have the Diamond Card? They said it has 22.GB of memory bandwidth, not only that, what does Sapphire have to do with Diamond?

Hey teklord do you mind posting your GPU-Z for the card, also which brand do you own?

There is no PCI card that has 22 GB bandwidth. The best right now is the 8500GT by Sparkle and that has 12.8, every other card is less.

My card is an Axle brand FX 5500. I got it off eBay really cheap. Pretty good for the price and really helps surf the net faster. I am looking into replacing my OEM mobo with the same make and model but with an AGP slot, so I don't have to reinstall Windows XP hopefully. I want to put a HD 3850 in an AGPx4 slot, which has almost 4 times the transfer rate of my PCI slots.

Sparkle 8500GT PCI vs. HIS HD 3850 512MB AGP 4x

Here is the screenshot you asked for General.

Here is the one from my 3dfuzion FX5500


This card is pretty good, because its not a low end one. Its like midrange.

im real sure its diamond at least the box says so..... but i guess its only fair, you can do simple math to prove it:

MEM CLK * BUS WIDTH * 2 (AS DDR ITS TWICE THE MEMCLK) / 8 BITS PER BYTE = X

RADEON 2400 PRO

350.000.000 * 64 * 2 / 8 = 5.6 GB/s

All in all is a good card but its not what i hoped for and even more important here in Venezuela where i live pci cards are pretty rare so the prices are really stupid son im gonna sell it and upgrade my whole PC haha.... the only models you can get are:

PNY 5200 128MB = 100$
EVGA 6200 256MB = 200$
VISIONTEK 2400 PRO 256MB = 400$ <-- LOL!

So with those prices if i keep it.... well i wont. the card is good great graphics, gotta love ati's avivo and its video processing capabilities, it truly is a good gfxcard i played just nfsu1 at 1280x1024 full detail aa8x af16x and its great no delays at all. until i sell it ill test some more games.

Never pay more than about $100 dollars for a PCI card, they are so weak compared to even a AGP 4x card which is 8 times more powerful and doesn't share it's bandwidth with the other PCI slots. I think instead of buying another 8500GT, I'm going to put another mobo in my PC and reinstall Windows. I found an incredible mobo that fits my PC perfectly and is cutting edge technology(incredible find), so I'm going to go with that.

I still think PCI cards like the Albatron 8600GT will help a lot of people, especially the ones that just bought an OEM machine with no graphics card slots. People should be more open minded about these cards, but not be oblivious to the fact that they are ultra weak compared to better technology.

As for Tha General, I think he should upgrade his processor to that $10 dollar 1GHz one that was suggested in that other thread, I did something similar to this PC and it really helped. His PC might be a little more powerful than a Xbox if he can get the processor and at least a Sparkle 8500GT card. That would be my goal then if I were him, is Xbox era games and before as realistically this is all he should expect with a machine from 1999.

Happy PCI gaming to all, and even if I can get my PCI-e 2.0 slot mobo soon, I still don't think all PCI cards should be burned in a big bonfire!

I haven't really made a decision on upgrading my CPU-Speed to something higher, but there is a 99% chance i will not do it. I am buying my secondary computer soon, a gateway computer duo core 2, with a 4670 card.

With this rig, i keep it with PCI cards, my next card to buy and test is the 8500GT or as i said i may be able to buy the 8600GT, but i will not go into any details right now. I will brag about it, if i get it lol. I will find out mid early Oct, before the 20th.

That HIS X1550 looks good, it has a higher core and memory clock and bandwidth then 2400 Cards, i will buy that one if the 8500GT doesn't work out or if i can't find the 8600GT or 8500Gt albatron.

I am kinda worry about buying the Sparkle 8500GT, because the card looks the same size as the PNY 8400GS and if that is the case, it will not fit good in my computer. I had trouble putting in the 8400GS, its too big for my small tower. My Visiontek 2400 and other pci cards which i have use slides in easy. The Ablbatron cards looks to be the same size as the Visiontek2400, which is great.

$ 10 dollars for a significant CPU upgrade seems worth it to me, even if only for short term use.

I'm sort of stuck myself because mobo swap will be costly to upgrade to PCI-e 2.0 slot because of everything I have to replace. That was the reason I got the 8500GT in the first place, but the performance of PCI cards in comparison to the other slots is utterly deplorable hence everyone but the people in this thread absolutely rejecting them.

You will like the 8500GT, just be realistic about what you can run well on your rig.

Hey, Tha General, what socket is your motherboard ?

I have a spare 1.1Ghz Pentium III (100x11 mult.) on the socket 370 I really don't need. I could just mail it to you instead of it collecting dust.

On another note, my main rig now has the Sapphire Radeon HD4870X2 2GB GDDR5. w00t.

I'd take direwolf007 up on his offer General, just make sure to apply thermal paste after you put in the new processor and Google "replacing CPU" to make sure you do it right. It is really tricky applying thermal paste precisely correct as you have to put the cooler straight down on the CPU after applying and not let it move at all while locking it down.

Congrats on the HD4870x2 direwolf, you should be set to own any game for years to come.

im getting a good used computer in a couple weeks and i noticed it didnt have a avg slot sux being i was gonna put my radeon 9550 in it but how do i know the difference between pci and pci-e

This should help:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periphe...t_Interconnect

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express


PCI Express is vastly superior, I'm stuck with PCI for now hence my interest in this thread. No one should intentionally choose PCI over PCI-e. Even AGP is far better than PCI

thanks for the link.ya i wish they made an adapter for a avg card to go into then into the pci slot but i guess that would just defeat the purpose.

It's called an ATOP, Google search it. You may be able to find one AGP to PCI-e only I believe

That AGP card of yours is fairly antiquated, I recommend the HD 3850 for AGP. Plenty of them over at Newegg.com

PCI-e, Zotac 8800GT OC is the best value IMO in PCI-e, $119.00 for one of them

I have no plans to upgrade this rig to a higher speed, i have plans to get a secondary computer as a said so no big deal.



old photo, but some might enjoy it.