New Graphics Card?

Ok...I KNOW this is a question that gets asked constantly......but I will preface this by saying that until my recent puter crash (it's still at the puter docs) the vidoe card I had ran SL beautifully....and I mean perfect. Windlight was perfect...everything was perfect with it. I had the Nvidia GeForce7600.

Now...it may be that my recent crash was indeed my video card giving out....so my question as you all have probably guessed......drum roll......

What other video cards are folks using that are working beautifully with SL?? I am tempted to just replace the dud (if it turns out to be the card, but the computer guy we use for our office happens to be here today and he said my issue is most likely the graphics card).....with the same Nvidia card because I truly never had any problems running SL with it. But.....if there's a sweeter option....I wanna know. I haven't paid attention to other threads on video cards cause I never had a problem.

I have a Dell XPS410 windowsXP.... lotta memory.

The NVIDIA 8800 series seems to get consistently good results for most people. I have an 8800 GTS 320 MB card from EGA that will run an instance of SL on each of my two 24" monitors.

/me gives a kiss to her Resident Geek for the sweet setup. Thank you, honey!

I use 2 x NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2 cards on an XP OS

SL words perfectly on just 1 card with all graphic prefs set to max but I have 2 pci express slots so thought I would stick the second one in that was shipped to me free of charge by mistake when I purchased the first

My older one is a 7900 and works well. It is getting a little old and if I were to buy a new card I would NOT go with a 7900 unless I was on a *very* tight budget.

I have an 8600 in my main and it does OK but not near as well as my wife's 8800. I will say that buying a new one, the 8800 should be the low end of what you are shopping for. But then just like cars, speed costs money: how fast do you want to go?

I'll 2nd that vote for the 8800 GTS 320mb card!!

They run a bit "hot" but thats to be expected I suppose.

And I AM the resident Geek (not Lindal's! )

I got a 768meg Nvidia 8800 about 18 months ago. It works well but there are newer cards out now.

Thanks gang~!!!

Speed is indeed important as when my fiance gets home he's gonna wanna be able to run NASA from our computer. LOL

But seriously...yes....the best we can get is going to be what he'll want anyway. I just recall hearing about some cards having some funknicity running SL and I want to be sure I don't get a card that has 'issues' with SL.....or visa versa.

Tod,

If you're 8800 is getting hot and your fans are working full pace, try looking at Riva Tuner, some people would recommend in addition Speedfan but having used them both Riva Tuner was my preferred choice.

What this product does is allow you amongst other things to control your fan speed on your GC.
I normally set mine at 80% and it runs quite as a mouse and retains a constant temperature of around 50-60 celsius subject to the outside temp. If the GC goes above 80 celsius running SL you will more than likely crash. With Riva's built in monitoring system it will enable you to look back at all temperatures since your PC was on as long as you have it running in the background.

With regards the 8800 I would second it, running a 8800GTS 640mb with Vista for the last year and half I have never had any problems. Only when it went above 80 celsius and the screen froze and graphics just became a full blurr.

Edit: Riva Tuner and Speedfan are both free to download

Oooohhh good to know~!!!!

Larrie, I'd never heard of Riva Tuner before you mentioned here, but I just looked at the website, and from what I can tell, there's nothing listed that RT does that the nVidia Contral Panel and nVidia Monitor don't also do. Fan speed and clock settings are easily configurable in the nVida Control Panel, and event logging, real-time monitoring, and threshold alerts are what the nVidia Montior is for. So what else does Riva Tuner do that these things don't?

Also, I would disagree with your assessment that going above 80 degrees is an automatic crash. It may well vary from system to system, depending on any number of factors, but on my machine, it's perfectly normal for GPU1 to hover around 72 degrees when idling, and for GPU2 to be around 64 degrees. Both are 8800GTX (768MB). Going up to 80 or so under heavy use is not uncommon at all.

In fact, the nVidia monitor by default does not consider the temperature worth complaining about until it gets up to 127 degrees. I've never actually seen it get anywhere near that, but 8800's are designed to run pretty hot, safely.

I think what's most important is to make sure your entire system is well ventilated, and has enough adequate fans all over it, so that when any one component heats up, the others are not heavily affected by it. Investing in a good case is very worthwhile, and little things like rerouting your all your wiring to make sure it's not in the way of air flow can make an enormous difference. A lot of the big brand name manufacturers (Dell, especially, in my experience) tend to fall pretty short on these things.

My guess would be that when your card gets up to 80, it's a sign that the entire system is too hot, and that's why you're crashing. It's probably not just the video card itself that's at issue.

The Nvidia 8800GT is a smokin' fast card, but your Dell's power supply may not be powerful enough to run it.

If cost is not an issue and you will be using the computer for DirectX apps as well as SL (which is OpenGL instead), then by all means get Nvidia's top of the line, the 9000 series.

I have an 8800GT 512MB, which was relatively inexpensive but works terrifically with SL. Above a certain level in Nvidia's line, you're mostly paying for more memory bandwidth, since SL doesn't use the DirectX enhancements. Memory bandwidth is VERY important, but do remember that you really cannnot SEE any frame rate above 50

I just downloaded Nvidia's automatic performance tuning software, NTUNE (http://www.nvidia.com/object/ntune_5.05.54.00.html). Anybody have experience with this?

(edit) Here's NVIDIA's web page comparing their 8000 series cards, handy but a bit tough to find on their website: http://www.nvidia.com/page/geforce8.html

I recently upgraded from a 256Mb Nvidia 7600 to the 512Mb 9600 - I used to run with the graphics settings somewhere between medium and High, and now have it on Ultra with a couple of things turned down slightly and I get triple the fps or better most of the time. No problems at all that I've noticed.

One thing to remember though is that upgrading the card is quite likely to mean upgrading the power supply, which in my case more or less doubled the cost.

it all depends on your price range and how 'future proof' you want your card. I'm no geek but i'm a bit obsessive about shopping for a good deal. Espesialy since my card went out last week and I'm back to the on board video card. And my case being low profile.... is problimatic to say the least.

First thing is go with nvidia. Sl hates ATI with a passion of a thousand suns. Other then that it depends on if you have a pci express x16 port and what you want to pay. But you can get a 8800 gt for around 130 bucks now
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010380048%201305520548%20106791921%201067932704&bop=And&Order=PRICE

or a 8800 gts for 130 (after rebate)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130317

IF you have a pci-e 2.0 x 16 slot then there are som 9600 in the same price range
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010380048+1305520548+106792522+1067937365&name=GeForce+9600+GT&Order=PRICE

For an older 7600 series it is in the 50 to 60 buck range and dirt cheap if you go earlier then that.

I hope my little link spam helped *chcukles*

I use a laptop with a decent CPU and an 8800GT Mobile. My desktop is a Dell XPS 410 with an XFX 8800GTX Extreme overclocked and it runs SL flawlessly, granted I play on XP Pro. A good processor is also needed to play SL well, so keep that in mind. Any decent vid card should do you fine, I can play it on my laptop in Vista with 3 gigs of RAM and a decent CPU on the highest settings with no issue.

Um ok....seeing as I'm not home and I don't have access to my puter since it's *sniffle* still in the shop......what type of power supply upgrade am I looking at here? What do I need. My fiance seems to think I should just trash it and get a new puter but to me that's nuts. I've hardly used this one to anywhere near full capacity. So.....upgrading it might be the better way to go.

Can someone give me the low down on 'power supply'....what that means....what I'll need and so on.....thanks.

What card are you looking at? If you're thinking the 8800GT...

Q: What are the recommended power supply requirements for both the GeForce 8800 GT in single and multi-GPU configurations?
A: GeForce 8800 GT graphics cards require a minimum 400 W or greater system power supply (with 12V current rating of 26 A) for single GPU operation. Please refer to www.SLIZone.com for a list of recommended SLI certified power supplies for multi-GPU configurations.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_8800gt_faq.html

I would go higher than a 400W though, maybe that's just me. A power supply is what regulates power to the rest of the system. The more powerful the card, the more power is needed. It's the thing that the power cord plugs into in the back of the computer. Since you said you had a Dell XPS 410 (like me), you will have to do a bit of custom work since Dell uses cheap PSU's. Nothing too hard though, just new holes in the proper spots.

You don't need to trash it, I bought a Dell XPS 410 out of desperation, gutted it and put all new stuff in it over time. It's one of the more customizable retail PC's I've used actually.

Hmmm....ok......someone's going to have to enlighten me then, as to how exactly to reconfigure my PSU to my Dell. I guess I didn't realize that simply plugging it in wasn't enough. Doh. LOL
Really tho.....I'm sure I can do what ever needs to be done, if someone can walk me through it or point me to a site that does so.....I really don't want to pay the repair place to do anything that I can do myself. It's bad enough I brought it in at all....I was just too freaked .... but if it was only the g-card anyway, then I don't have any problem doing any tweeking myself.

You can't reconfigure your Dell PSU, you will need a completely new one. It's relatively easy to do, just plug in the plugs to the corresponding parts like it is now. You can find a guide anywhere, I'm sure there's Youtubes out of there of how to do it.

http://www.fonerbooks.com/r_power.htm is an example.

Right ok....I'm over complicating it. I went to the link posted and it all looks pretty straight forward. (I'm thinking how impressed my fiance will be when I totally amp up my PC all by myself LOL) Mostly I just want my dam computer back and functioning~!!!

To answer this Chosen as you may recollect I am not technically minded to answer technical questions.

If you do a google search for 'Nvidia fan speed control' you will find that Riva Tuner is the top and most recommended even on Nvidia's own forum.

This link is part of a guide to using the Forceware Control Panel and explains Riva Tuner in more detail and is recommended for ease of use as explained in the link.
http://www.tweakguides.com/NVFORCE_10.html




I agree that the 8800 runs hot and my understanding is it runs close to 90 degrees Celsius when under full load and when idle should run around the 60 degree level.

The 127 degrees you're referring to sounds like the slow down threshold set by default in the temp monitor, if you check a box underneath it, it will notfiy you when your cards reach that temperature. I would suggest lowering that.

All good advice and I would also add, keep your PC raised off the ground, not direct on the floor/carpet, it will take in dust very quickly and will block the inlets that allow the Fan to cool the PC.

In my situation which I failed to mention in my previous post was the default fan speed set on the GPU and this varies from makers.

I tried using Nvidia Ntune to adjust the fan speed suspecting that this was the problem, this did not work and I was unable to see the default speed.
After further research the Monitor from Nvidia control panel revealed the GPU was actually 94 degrees following my crash not 80 degress as previously mentioned. The Slow down Threshold was set at 115 so no warning was given.

I learnt after installing Riva Tuner that my GPU fan speed was set as default at 25% and Ntune or the forceware control panel was unable to change that.
With Riva Tuner I have been able to maximise the performance of my GPU and made other changes to enhance its performance.

Also, it has been previously mentioned regarding the forceware temp montior the design is questionable, the graph suspiciously resembles some third-party monitoring utilities. For example, RivaTuner, the first to use many interesting ideas.

Just a heads up:

I recently replaced a PSU in an older Dell. Sometimes the new one is a tad bigger than the old one, so you may have some McGuyvering to do. Nothing too drastic.

Ok, my Dell is actually a refurbished purchased in Nov 2006. I'm guessing the PSU replaces the existing power chord? I'm getting the feeling I know more about this then the repair place I took it to (as they are trying to replace my Nvidia 7600 with a 7200 saying it'll be sufficiant)....So....my instinct tells me I'm going to have to just do this myself.

Yep! And the nice thing about Power Supplies:

All the plugs for every thing inside are "keyed" so as long as you pay attention, they'll only fit in 1 way.

Cool...I like user friendly gadgets. I'm still waiting to hear back from the repair place (I asked if they would just order me the better card and the PSU and install that, but we shall see) If they are morons about it.....then I'll take it back.....I will be able to use my other PC when it arrives.....then I can come in here and bug you guys and you can walk me thru the process, hehe. (((((hugs))))) Seriously tho....you guys are awesome.