Gainward GeForce 8500GT Graphic Card.

Gadgetman496

Anyone familiar with this card?
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=334545

I can't see from their site if this needs to be powered separately but it looks like it does not?

If it does not? is that because it is a silent card & has no fan?

Gaming is not a priority so I'm wondering if any of you have an opinion on it?

christophicus

Yup it looks like that is a silent (fanless) card . I assume your looking at it for HD playback ? This is not a gaming crd at all . Because its fanless you will want decent airflow through your case.

Gadgetman496

christophicus wrote:

Yup it looks like that is a silent (fanless) card . I assume your looking at it for HD playback ? This is not a gaming crd at all . Because its fanless you will want decent airflow through your case.

Correct christophicus it is fanless for sure & keeping it cool won't be an issue for me.

So? is the fact it has no fan the only reason it does not require to be powered?

I thought that all PCI Express cards needed to be powered separately?

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Anti

Low powered cards like the 8500 do not require a seperate power connection. The pic-e slot will deliver enough.

Gadgetman496

Anti wrote:

Low powered cards like the 8500 do not require a seperate power connection. The pic-e slot will deliver enough.

Got ya Anti.

Would it be good enough for Video editing/transcoding & watching DVD /movies in general?

christophicus

yup yup

Anti

gadgetman496 wrote:

Got ya Anti.

Would it be good enough for Video editing/transcoding & watching DVD /movies in general?

This will have nothing to do with the graphics card. Its all done by the CPU.

stevejazzx

Anti: watching a dvd is gpu surely? i realise the cpu will of course be involved:)


I bought one of those gainwards 8500 gt last week (for a htpc) btw and its quite big card the pecs looks
core 600 memory speed 1200mhz? couldn't find any info pixel pipelines ect although I'm awae that it's different for dx 10 cards...

stevejazzx

gadgetman496 wrote:

stevejazzx,

do you think it's good bang for bucks? Would you recommend it?

Well i ain't tested it on games. I got one for a htpc system as its silent and cheap. The specs are very impressive for a 90euro card/not much differnet to thr 8600gt which would be classed a a respectable mid range card. Its a nicely made piece of kit(takes two slots btw contrary to some previews i've seen) If it really has a 600mhz core and 1200 mhz memory speed and at least 8 pixel pipelenes then yes she should play most stuff, don't expect maximum settings (ddr3 memory aswell will help) I'd say that unless you're looking for a dedicated games card then shes a winner.

Gadgetman496

christophicus wrote:

Yeah with these cards when watching video its all done on the card, thats why nvidea pushed purevideo so much. and these new 8 series cards have hardware/algorythms specially for HD video.

Good enough, that will do me nicely.

christophicus

Steve 8 series cards dont have pixle pipelnes, they have stream processors
the 8500 has 16 0f them

Anti

stevejazzx wrote:

Anti: watching a dvd is gpu surely? i realise the cpu will of course be involved:)


I bought one of those gainwards 8500 gt last week (for a htpc) btw and its quite big card the pecs looks
core 600 memory speed 1200mhz? couldn't find any info pixel pipelines ect although I'm awae that it's different for dx 10 cards...

You would think so. But no. It uses the cpu and quite heavilly depending on which you have. You might see maybe 5% gpu load but not much more.

stevejazzx

Anti wrote:

You would think so. But no. It uses the cpu and quite heavilly depending on which you have. You might see maybe 5% gpu load but not much more.

hate to argue here but mean to say that the cpu does most of the work?
it was always my understanding that the gpu handled video almost independently (depending on the gpu of course, obviously on graphics rely more heavily on cpu) depending also on softeare utilisation of the graphics card? cpu usuage is high becasue of the decoding right but on modern gpu s this is done with the cards ram right? so it would be the gpu would bearing most of the brunt, no?

Anti

Well i have a 8800gtx at home. Ill test to be 100% sure tonight. But im pretty certain that the cpu does almost of all of the work.

christophicus

I thinkanti is right.

on a side note thegtxand 8800gts do not hav the added hd video elements to them.

Anti

IT seems AVIVO cards can handle HD encoding some what by giving a 20/30% boost. But thats obviously only on the newer high end ATI cards.

311

The x1300 card i have has the avivo technology.
Its designed for video performance and also handles the windows aero envoirnment aswell.

It's suppose to be better at video than other higher end cards.

Gadgetman496

_Brian_ wrote:

The x1300 card i have has the avivo technology.
Its designed for video performance and also handles the windows aero envoirnment aswell.

It's suppose to be better at video than other higher end cards.

Does anyone know if the 8500GT will handle Vista Aero?
It does say it's Vista ready (Whatever that means)

stevejazzx

Of course it does. Some on board chips can handle it...

Anti

gadgetman496 wrote:

Does anyone know if the 8500GT will handle Vista Aero?
It does say it's Vista ready (Whatever that means)

As long as the card or chipset is sm2 or above it will handle aero.

kaisersose77

got the asus 8500gt myself, aero runs fine which you would expect, HD acceleration works great. Was watching BBC HD on my dvb-s2 pci card and cpu was only 15-20% max. Using a dell e520 with e6300 processor.

mathias

I have this in a HTPC , heres a few points to note ,

It will handle aero no problem ,
Its quiet , obviously ,

It has problems , especially in relation to overscan on a flatscreen TV , as far as I can tell there is no fix for it yet in the drivers , nvidia say its on the way , but dont hold your breath because its not fixed in the Beta drivers either so I expect at least a few months wait.

There are a number of gaming issues with the card , these are listed on pages 18 and 19 in the release notes.

http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/158.24/158.24_ForceWare_Release_Notes.pdf

I was using the Aurora screensaver on my HTPC , it hangs the pc everytime a few minutes after the screensaver starts , other screensavers work fine though , weird.

Edit , Just found out that theres a 160.03 Beta driver that fixes overscan , its not on nvidia.com though , its on the guru of 3D , I'll try it later.

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=1634

Gadgetman496

mathias wrote:

I have this in a HTPC , heres a few points to note ,

It will handle aero no problem ,
Its quiet , obviously ,

It has problems , especially in relation to overscan on a flatscreen TV , as far as I can tell there is no fix for it yet in the drivers , nvidia say its on the way , but dont hold your breath because its not fixed in the Beta drivers either so I expect at least a few months wait.

There are a number of gaming issues with the card , these are listed on pages 18 and 19 in the release notes.

http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/158.24/158.24_ForceWare_Release_Notes.pdf

I was using the Aurora screensaver on my HTPC , it hangs the pc everytime a few minutes after the screensaver starts , other screensavers work fine though , weird.

Edit , Just found out that theres a 160.03 Beta driver that fixes overscan , its not on nvidia.com though , its on the guru of 3D , I'll try it later.

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=1634

I've just installed the 8500GT in a brand new rig & am having a problem with it. When I start the machine everything is fine but between 5-10 minutes the screen starts to weaver everytime I move an open window. The only way I can describe the effect is that it is like dragging a sheet of paper under water.

The problem is that the driver appears to have crapped out? I get the yellow circle with the black exclamation mark in the device manager. I reinstalled the driver & it worked again for a short period but then crapped out again.

I downloaded the latest driver & re-seated the card & installed the new driver, again all appeared to be fine for a short period but it crapped out again. I'm convinced now that the card itself is faulty & will more then likely RMA it back to Komplett. The rig was just built on Fri. and there is nothing other then the OS (XP Pro) on it at the moment, so I don't suspect a conflict with anything else. Anyone come across this before?

stevejazzx

mathias wrote:

I have this in a HTPC , heres a few points to note ,

It will handle aero no problem ,
Its quiet , obviously ,

It has problems , especially in relation to overscan on a flatscreen TV , as far as I can tell there is no fix for it yet in the drivers , nvidia say its on the way , but dont hold your breath because its not fixed in the Beta drivers either so I expect at least a few months wait.

Don't have this problem...last driver fixed it.

matias wrote:

There are a number of gaming issues with the card , these are listed on pages 18 and 19 in the release notes.

There are no issues there realting to this 8500 or even the 8500 range..unless I'm going blind!

matias wrote:

I was using the Aurora screensaver on my HTPC , it hangs the pc everytime a few minutes after the screensaver starts , other screensavers work fine though , weird.

odd...