So you only have PCI slots and want to game?

Tha General said:
567/333 to 650/400 , but didn't make one bit of a difference, i don't OC anymore, seems pointless and dumb and a waste of time. I get better performance with stock settings and besides when i buy a card, i like to keep the card forever, OC is risky.
The only way you will get a performance boost with any card if you OC at extreme levels, but you need a super PSU and good cooling to do it.
Click to expand...

I seem to get alittle more performance by ocing the memory...
Maybe because of the 64 bit on the card?


Tha General said:
I know i am getting to catch heat saying this, but i stick to my word. Video cards do not get bottleneck by your CPU. I ran a Pentium III/600MHZ with 512MB and a 90watts PSU and i ran the 8400gs in it and the 2400hd and i still got amazing performance in games.

Your computer is fine, your card shouldn't cause any bottleneck " unless " you have something in your computer that is causing it. My Pentium III was bottleneck and the card took a huge hit, but it wasn't my CPU that was doing it, it was my External HD being hooked up to the USB 2.0 card. When i remove the eXTERnal hd to the back of my mb, my video cards and system was running better and i got a huge performance increase. So make sure you don't have alot of junk in your computer.
Click to expand...

I clean up junk alot so no worries about that. But my hard drive has very little free space cause i have lots of games and music installed. My PSU is a 350 watt + i have a pci cooler hooked up. i still think the P4 is kind of a bottleneck for some newer games... or maybe my pcu is just not strong enough.



Tha General said:
What settings are you running it on? resolution, settings? etc
Click to expand...

I run L4d on a 19 inch monitor 800x600 on all low settings..
For other source games such has Team fortress 2 and Css
I use Fps configs, which makes the graphics look terrible, but i needed the performance
CSS w/config: 51 fps avg
TF2 w/config: 29 fps avg
 
Tha General said:
I know i am getting to catch heat saying this, but i stick to my word. Video cards do not get bottleneck by your CPU. I ran a Pentium III/600MHZ with 512MB and a 90watts PSU and i ran the 8400gs in it and the 2400hd and i still got amazing performance in games.
Click to expand...

Okay this is actually pretty simple.

Everything goes through the CPU for pre processing before it goes to the GPU to actually process.

Now say you have a **** CPU, it can send 50 bits of data to the graphics card per second, but the graphics card is able to process 100 bits of data per second. So basically, the CPU is holding the GPU back because it is not sending enough info to the GPU to keep up.

If the CPU sends more information (by being more powerful) the GPU would actually perform better, so you would notice frame rates and graphical benchmarks increasing when increasing the CPU power.

This is bottleneck, when any part of the computer is causing something else to not perform the way it could.

That's as simple as it gets I think.


This statement is true, proven through old articles on sites like anand, toms and other hardware forums.



@ThaGeneral, I bet if I put your best pci card in my system, put in ram that would be comparable(which would require me putting in different chips, altering timings and mhz speeds, used the same harddrive etc, your card would perform better with my cpu than your own, yet again proving that a good part of your statements above and beyond, complete brain farts. I'm thinking you should read around more and stay out of the pci threads for a few months so you can grasp a 13 year olds perspective on hardware that can be googled.
 
magemofo said:
Hey everyone. I was going to PM vfn with this, but PMing has a 45 post count requisite, so I guess I’ll post here for everyone. I just have a couple questions about getting a graphics card for my comp.

Here's a picture of my slots and video card. Pic Sorry it's so fuzzy, I took it with my phone.

Anyways, I was thinking about buying the GeForce 8500 GT recommended on this post, but as I mentioned I have a couple of questions about it. On my picture the video card isn't really attached to anything at the end(where the casing is), it's just screwed on by two screws. In the picture for the new video card, however, there are three places to plug things into. Does this mean the card isn't compatible with my computer, or maybe I'll have to make some major adjustments to allow it to fit?

Also, will the 8500 be able to support World of Warcraft in 1680x1050 res or not? I currently get about 3-5fps in WoW on my integrated graphics card on that resolution, will the new card be able to pump it up to about 20fps? Or is it not designed for such a high res?

Thanks for the help!
Click to expand...

Your top slot, which looks black, maybe dark brown though. Its an agp slot. You should look into the best agp card, which performs considerably better than the top pci card available today.
 
Looks like a pcie x16 slot, but i could be wrong.

supersmashbrada said:
@ThaGeneral,
Click to expand...

Um, thanks for sharing all that information. Now i understand the faster and more powerful your computer is, the better a card will perform. My 2400HD or 8400gs perform pretty good with my Pentium III, and Celeron D , however using this new emachine system, both cards run about what 3x more powerful. However , i don't believe in this so called GPU bottlenecking / CPU mess. Unless, unless there is something in your system to cause the bottleneck.I believe the only way you will get a gpu bottleneck is if you system is not setup correctly or as i said something is causing it, not the CPU, but a difference device.. Base upon my experience anyway.

When i had my P3 and when that usb card+hd was bottlenecking my computer, one game shade wrath ran at 1-5fps, once i remove the external hd to the back of my mb, i got between 25-45fps.
 
xpunkdthrice said:
I seem to get alittle more performance by ocing the memory Maybe because of the 64 bit on the card?
Click to expand...
It may seem that way, but i am not sure if you are getting a boost. I did some tests at 650/400 with my 8400gs many times over and over again with different games , then i test them with stock, and well i didn't see any performance boost.

I did however when i was using my Celeron D at 3.06ghz and i use my 2400HD, the stock is 519/396, so i oc the card to 600/450 and i did notice a boost, got like 10 extra fps. But i did question, is this worth it? no. So i just keep it at stock and everything runs fast and normal. I say all the time, if you want better performance, just buy a better card.

xpunkdthrice said:
I clean up junk alot so no worries about that. But my hard drive has very little free space cause i have lots of games and music installed. My PSU is a 350 watt + i have a pci cooler hooked up. i still think the P4 is kind of a bottleneck for some newer games... or maybe my pcu is just not strong enough.
Click to expand...
I play most of my games on my external hd, which is 500GB. But on my internal , i do have like 130GB of space. Well the p4 is pretty good for light to mid gaming and some high end games, depending on what card you have.

One question, did you build this computer or is it a prebuilt?
The 8400gs when i ran it on my celeron D which was at 3.06ghz and i had 2GB of ram with XP, ran pretty good. If you want to continue using the p4, you may need to get a better card over the 8400gs. The 8400gs is good tho. But most new games need a stronger CPU, so yea the p4 won't pull off high performance, but its good enough if you had a better GPU.


xpunkdthrice said:
run L4d on a 19 inch monitor 800x600 on all low settings..
For other source games such has Team fortress 2 and Css
I use Fps configs, which makes the graphics look terrible, but i needed the performance
CSS w/config: 51 fps avg
TF2 w/config: 29 fps avg
Click to expand...

Wait, have you tried the 175.16?
Try those drivers and play L4D at 1280x1024 effects to low, shaders at high and turn off Vsync and see what type of performance you get. Also keep in mind, i never had a p4 before, but from what i am told, a Pentium 4 is faster then that Celeron D i had.
 
Tha General said:
" i don't believe in this so called GPU bottlenecking / CPU mess."

"Unless, unless there is something in your system to cause the bottleneck."I believe the only way you will get a gpu bottleneck is if you system is not setup correctly or as i said something is causing it, not the CPU, but a difference device.. Base upon my experience anyway."
Click to expand...


These two statements above are quite contradictive. You dont believe in something, but then you state unless something in your system is causing a bottleneck. That's the whole definition of bottlenecking. One component should operate at a "8" but another only operates at "4" so your system in all operates at a "6." It doesnt matter if your system is bottlenecked a lot by one component or just a little, its still there. It seems like your "beliefs" are more like "faiths." Do you still believe the world is flat? because the information is there, literally hundreds of articles, people spending hundreds of hours, even on official hardware sites, comparing cpus and vga's to benefit people like you and I, along with the people that come here for advise and yet you still pull down your sunglasses when the light is directly in your eye. Its just getting rediculous, almost to the point of contacting a moderator to get things edited. Seriously tarnishing TS imo.



the usb thing was because you were flooding your bandwidth capabilities.
 
******** said:
Originally Posted by magemofo
Hey everyone. I was going to PM vfn with this, but PMing has a 45 post count requisite, so I guess I’ll post here for everyone. I just have a couple questions about getting a graphics card for my comp.

Here's a picture of my slots and video card. Pic Sorry it's so fuzzy, I took it with my phone.

Anyways, I was thinking about buying the GeForce 8500 GT recommended on this post, but as I mentioned I have a couple of questions about it. On my picture the video card isn't really attached to anything at the end(where the casing is), it's just screwed on by two screws. In the picture for the new video card, however, there are three places to plug things into. Does this mean the card isn't compatible with my computer, or maybe I'll have to make some major adjustments to allow it to fit?

Also, will the 8500 be able to support World of Warcraft in 1680x1050 res or not? I currently get about 3-5fps in WoW on my integrated graphics card on that resolution, will the new card be able to pump it up to about 20fps? Or is it not designed for such a high res?

Thanks for the help!
Click to expand...

The top slot is a x16 pci-e slot, so there's no reason to look at pci cards, get any midrange pci-e x16 card you want and you should be good to go. I have no idea what you mean by the mounting question. Almost any pci-e x16 card will mount in your case from what I can tell.

Also, regarding OC'ing not affecting performance of the cards...I think it's probably due to the PCI bus already being maxed out by the card...so more speed does little or nothing.

Regarding GPU "bottleneck," even on my gaming rig, I'm cpu limited, as overclocking the cpu gives me much more performance than overclocking my video cards.
 
Were you able to look up the model number there on the board, I tried, got no result from the light being over the board, agp slots are about 3 centiments longer than pci slot, not including the release tab, pci is even longer.

vnf4 if you have or could see the model number post it here for reference.
 
supersmashbrada said:
These two statements above are quite contradictive. You dont believe in something, but then you state unless something in your system is causing a bottleneck.
Click to expand...

Actually what i was trying to say, i don't believe a video card can be bottleneck by the CPU, only by devices if set up incorrectly. I do agree about the flooding bandwidth thing. Even tho with that Celeron d i had, i did the same thing and there wasn't a bandwidth issue.

supersmashbrada said:
Do you still believe the world is flat?
Click to expand...
I never believe the world was flat anyway, so you know.......

IN other news


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102846

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161283

New 2400HD, and the brand new 4350 finally at newegg.
 
Tha General said:
One question, did you build this computer or is it a prebuilt?
Click to expand...
The computer was prebuilt, i bought it in 2002 and at the time... it was considered a pretty good computer.




Tha General said:
Wait, have you tried the 175.16?
Try those drivers and play L4D at 1280x1024 effects to low, shaders at high and turn off Vsync and see what type of performance you get. Also keep in mind, i never had a p4 before, but from what i am told, a Pentium 4 is faster then that Celeron D i had.
Click to expand...

I haven't been able to access my computer due to my family member taking it on vacation but it will be back in a couple of weeks and ill post up test results and screenshots on here once i get a chance to test it
 
xpunkdthrice I am about to dual boot soon, so i will let you know how performance is in games with xp using my 8400gs with the 175.16
 
supersmashbrada said:
Were you able to look up the model number there on the board, I tried, got no result from the light being over the board, agp slots are about 3 centiments longer than pci slot, not including the release tab, pci is even longer.

vnf4 if you have or could see the model number post it here for reference.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's an A8M2N-LA, which according to HP has an x16 slot. Just looking at the pic though, you can tell it's an x16 slot and not agp because an agp slot would be much more indented on the board. Here's a picture of a board with both both slots so it's easy to compare them.

4coredualsata2enlarge.jpg


In the pic it's easy to see the difference, since agp is a much shorter slot and is indented in the board more.
 
k thx, I was wondering, guess it was just bothering me, I'd hate for the guy to buy an agp card on my account. Thx again.
 
Yeah, it was a kinda bad pic... Hopefully he gets what he needs...and if not, most places have return policies. :)


Also, I updated some of the links on the original post to be more up to date and include some of the newer PCI cards out now.
 
I stumbled on to this thread when googling pic graphics card. After reading 90+ pages of comments I can see a lot of bickering but a lot of good advice. So now im inspired to test things out.

I just built a mini-itx media center pc yesterday (because they are all the rage these days I just had to build one =P) and today I ordered a 8400gs to tinker with off newegg . Should be here 2moro seeing as here warehouse is only 2 hours from here.

Im going to run a **** load of benchmarks before and after when it gets here
-geek bench
-passmark
-3d Marks 06
-Bioshock
-Crysis
-Left4Dead
-World of Warcraft
-Ghostbusters the Video Game
and anything else i can think off.

From online benchmarks it looks like the intel Atom is as powerul at a P4 2.6 so it will be interesting to see how it all works out with a PCI 8400gs.

Has anyone else tried this setup out?
 
Dont expect miracles on your system. I have a similar P4 setup with an 8400gs that I mess around with.

Bioshock will play ok at low settings at 1024x768. And contrary to what Tha General has been spouting, Crysis is unplayable unless you are happy playing at 10-15fps at low settings (you wont be).

Left 4 Dead will play just fine - most Source engine games run very well.

I would expect WoW to run well.
 
Alright, thanks everyone for the feedback. I honestly had not even noticed that extra slot above my PCIs. I'll take a look at it when I get a chance, research some cards, and maybe come back with a couple choices for evaluation.

Thanks again guys!
 
Yea no miracles expected honestly. This is just my media center pc so I will almost never play any games on it except maybe emulators for retro gaming from my youth on the big screen.

But Im fascinated by the underdog syndrome. The GMA 950 plays ePSx and Snes9x just fine, didn't really need the 8400GS but it was to kewl an idea to pass up.

Im just waiting on UPS now they should be here any time now. =P

I did see that Newegg has a new ECS 512 64bit with fan 8400gs. Kicking my self in the butt now cuz I got the Sparkle and it has a big old heatsink. Has anyone tried out the ECS boards? I like the idea of the fan over the heatsink. But I wonder if i truely am not happy with the heatsink if i could just install one of those vga color. The ones that look like the PNY ones for about $3

Has anyone removed there passive cooled and placed on a heatsink/fan combo?
 
So my Sparkle 8400gs came today. It was in a dif retail box from what was shown on newegg.com. I ran a few benchmarks and games on he Atom/GMA950 combo then on the 8400gs. I also tried different drives for the 8400gs. The latest from nvidia, the ones on the cd and finally 175.16. This was done on a fresh install of Windows XP SP3 also. My feeling are mixed and you will see why.

Atom/GMA 950

3dMark 06 - 127
PassMark 3d test score 90.1
ATITools 3d scene avg 31fps
World of Warcraft Ultra 1024x768 12-14 fps in open area & 20+ inside buildings
2moons 11 FPS in open area Max Settings
Runes of Magic everything on low and 800x600 avg 7fps
Crysis will not load

Atom/8400GS I got the best results with latest drives
3dMarks 06 -897
PassMark 101.6
ATiTools 3d scene avg 82fps
Runes of Magic everything on low and 800x600 avg 23fps
2moons 8fps everything low at 1024x768

WOW at 1025x768
World of Warcraft Ultra option 4fps open area & 30+ inside buildings
World of Warcraf Low option 8-12fps open & 40+ inside buildings

WOW at 800x600
World of Warcraft Ultra option 6fps open area & 30+ inside buildings
World of Warcraft Low option 11-15fps open & 50+ inside buildings

Crysis at 800x600 all detail to low and AA off
Sky falling 20+fps
on the beach at start 15-18fps
First gun fight 14-16fps

Games Not tested yet
Bioshock
Left 4 Dead
Ghostbusters

So basically the 8400gs performs worse than the GMA950 on WOW & 2moons. I have the IGP turned off in bios and windows so that its not slowing down the 8400 but I don't understand why WOW and 2moons would perform so badly. Looking online it appears a lot of people are having really bad results with the 8400gs PCI in WOW. Whats really funny if in WOW the log in screen with the dragon who drops down and breaths fire FRAPS shows 20 with the GMA950 but almost 60fps on the 8400gs but in-game is much slower on the 8400gs at lower settings compared to GMA950 at max.

Im going to try out Bioshock, Left 4 Dead and Ghostbusters tomorrow.

Has anyone had good results with te 8400gs and World of Warcraft?

Im considering RMA the 8400gs back to Newegg and getting either the 2400 or 9400 just to see how the would compare. Thankfully this is just my media center pc and not my gaming rig, but its still fun to toy with as if it was my gaming rig =P
 
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