Need a new video card

[Krusty]

Well if the CPU can't feed the GPU fast enough, the GPU just waits. It waits miniscule amounts.

That means the GPU won't flood the CPU, it won't make it any slower. It just isn't being utilized at full potential. Currently EVERY high end video card in existence is like this. The bottleneck has always been the CPU.

[Brenjen]

Well, yeah....you get my point. I just said it backwards. The 6800GT speeds will be about as much as the 2.8ghz can handle. No matter which processor is in queue waiting. No appreciable differences in performance will be seen by dropping more money on a more expensive/faster video card unless the CPU is upgraded too.

 I did an experiment with my old box which had 1GHZ mem & a P-4 2.8GHZ CPU & performance gains were slight when I plugged in the 6800GT, I eventually went with the 6600LE because of price vs. performance; the 6800GT just didn't pick up much performance on the benchies or the real world fps in AH. I tried some ATI card the guys at a local PC shop here let me try out, they said it was faster than the 6800GT (can't remember what it was called) & after they loaded in the drivers & pulled up futuremark it only scored a couple points higher than the 6800GT & by now we were talking well over $100 more than the 6600LE.

 I know there will be some gains with a faster card, but is it really worth all the money spent when a lesser card will do almost the exact same because of the CPU limitations? Future upgrades like Conroe or the 65nm AMD offering aside of course, I'm sure there will be PCI-E slots on mobo's for some many years from now & a high end card purchased today will work a year from now in a DX10 & Vista enviroment too. Splitting hairs aside, did I make my point where it could be understood that time?

[Greebo]

My local computer shop had an X1600 in stock but not a 6800 GS. As the shop owner offered to exchange the X1600 if I wasn't happy with it, I bought it.

Well it is quite a bit slower than the 9800 Pro in AH, about 15% or so less FPS. I haven't tried updating its drivers yet though.

I'll get the shop to order me a 6800 on Monday. In the meantime, the X1600 gets me back in the air.

Thanks for the help, everyone.

[Krusty]

Definitely update the drivers. First use a driver cleaner program. The 9800 uses some older drivers and legacy drivers might have incompativble stuff in 'em. As for the x1600 I don't know what the best driver for it is, but Skuzzy knows all things driver-related.

[lefty2]

Greebo,

I have almost the same set-up you do 2.8c, p4c800 e dx, 9800 pro (sepphire), 350 PSU
Check the molex PSU lead, female connector pin 4 red lead pin. Look at it closely to see if it is burned or melted. I had one plugged in to my GFX card that fried (burned and or melted a little) but enough to send my card buggy.
Try this find another lead from your PSU to use.
1. re-seat your card in the AGP slot.
2. plug in new (different) lead.
See what happens. Its a weird one, and I still don't know why mine fried. If it turns out you have the same thing happening let me know. I would be interested.
Almost forgot that solved the problems I was having.

[Greebo]

Thanks Lefty, the connectors look OK though. I'm using the same lead on the X1600 with no problems.

After some Googling I found other people have had similar graphics glitches on two year old 9800s. They get hot, it fries the GPU and thats it for the card. To be fair, I had been a bit lazy about cleaning the inside of my PC before this problem occured. There was quite a bit of dust on the 9800's heatsinks and the case intake filter was completely clogged up.

One tip I tried that helped a bit was to clean off and reapply the heatsink compound on the GPU. Apparently it dries out over time. With this done it allowed the card to run in 2D fairly reliably, but it couldn't cope with 3D at all by the time I ditched it.