My 8800GT has officially given up the ghost. It served me well, but over the last few days my system kept locking up and freezing, often within minutes of booting up (sometimes while still at the login screen!), and as soon as I yanked it out and switched to the crappy onboard video, things were fine.
SO, I need a new card. BUT, my machine is a bitty Shuttle box with a 300W power supply and only one slot for a video card. This pretty much rules out all the decent cards I can find on Newegg. Either they require two slots or a minimum PSU of 400-450W, if not more. The only ones I can find that my system can handle are the crappy budget cards.
Say it ain’t so, Joe. Someone tell me there’s a card out there that can perform well under a 300W PSU. I’m not buying a whole new system for one lousy video card, but I do wanna be able to still play my games.
One other question – some of the cards specify a minimum amperage for the +12v line (usually in the 20-28 range). I checked my PSU and it says my amperage is +12vA = 8A & +12vB = 13.5A.
Is it additive (my +12v = 21.5A) or does it just use one or the other (my +12v = 13.5A or 8A)?
Hrmm. This post on another forum claims to be using this card (which was, coincidentally, the card I was originally debating before I noticed the 400W requirement) with his 250W PSU. Seeing as I have a 300W PSU, I should be fine, right?
By re-branded do you mean it’s the same card, or meaning it’s the next up in the line? Because if I’m just buying the same damn card all over again, I may as well just try to find an 8800 GT for cheaper.
Welp. It sounds like it’s the exact same card with just a different label. God dammit. How is that even legal?
What are my other options? I’m a little sour on dropping $130 for the same damn card I’ve had all this time. If I’m gonna pay that kinda money, I’d like to see some kind of improvement.
Well, in May, Ati will release the 4770, which is supposed to be slightly faster than the 8800GT, priced at $99, and having a power consumption of 80W, according to leaked slides (they were up at VR-Zone yesterday, but that article has been removed - there’s an Inquirer copy of most slides). Ati’s 4830 is an existing option with a minuscule performance edge over the 9800GT.
If you’re happy with NVidia stuff, waiting until a 9800GT price drop in May (forced by the 4770’s arrival) could ease the pain of buying the same card with a new sticker.
Other than that, you could start reading up on power consumption charts, and try to believe that your machine can handle an 9800GTX+ or 4850. Or buy a new PSU (if that is upgradeable, in your shuttle).
Yeah, the 40nm RV740 chip would be just the ticket once the HD 47X0 cards from ATI hit the street. Should be near 4850 performance for sub $100 with low power consumption to boot.
rajah: check Shuttle’s support list to see which video cards should work with your box. The “minimum power requirements” of video cards are usually overstated to leave headroom for other components and to make allowances for shitty PSUs. What really matters is total power consumption under load and how much juice your PSU can consistently provide. Odds are a 9800GT or HD 4850 will work. What CPU have you got?
Almost: at some point there was a die shrink on the G92 GPU used in the 9800GT - from 65nm in the 8800GT to 55nm - so current 9800GTs should run a bit cooler on less power than the 8800GT. But otherwise it’s the same technology.
I agree it’s confusing and annoying, but why would it be illegal to sell the same product under a different name?
What are my other options? I’m a little sour on dropping $130 for the same damn card I’ve had all this time. If I’m gonna pay that kinda money, I’d like to see some kind of improvement.
Unfortunately, given the space & power constraints of SFF PCs, the 9800 GT & HD 4850 (which is faster in some benchmarks, slower in others) are your best options. I suspect we’ll have to wait for the next generation of GPUs to see the next big jump in performance in single-slot video cards.
BTW, obvious question: have you checked to see if your 8800GT is still under warranty? It shouldn’t be more than a couple of years old, right?
The pictured 4770 is a dual-slot card: that’s not an option for a SFF PC like rajah’s. Though there may also be a single-slot version, of course.
The 8600 GT uses the G84 GPU. The 9600 GT uses the G94 GPU. The 9600 GT is quite a bit faster than the 8600 GT. Whereas stated before, the 8800GT & 9800GT use the same G92 tech, except the 9800GT’s GPU got a die shrink sometime last year. Note that the G92 is faster than the G94, despite the latter being more recent and having a higher model number.
Confused yet? It gets better!
The 8800 GS was a watered-down 8800 GT: fewer stream processors, narrower memory bus. The 9600 GSO was initially just a rebadged 8800 GS to clear out old stock. But then nVidia came out with new 9600 GSOs, which come in two flavors: one based on the G92 which uses a slower 128-bit memory bus; the other based on the G94 using a 256-bit memory bus. So that’s at least three distinct cards, all sold under the same name - fun!
Yeah, I realized after the fact that “illegal” was a poor choice of words. I was basically trying to say it’s unethical to a higher degree.
BTW, obvious question: have you checked to see if your 8800GT is still under warranty? It shouldn’t be more than a couple of years old, right?
It’s indeed under warranty (the card has a limited lifetime warranty, and it’s barely a year old) , and I plan on sending it in for repair/replacement. Problem is, however, that this is also my work machine and I have too many photos I need to work on and deliver to clients to be able to wait for the slow warranty process. And there’s no way I can get by on onboard video with the kind of work I need to do.
I figure I’ll just sell the 8800GT for $100 when I get it back and recoup some of the cost of the Diamond 4850 I bought last night. It’s pretty much the only single-slot 4850 I could find, so hopefully it’ll hold up.
Thanks for the link. Kinda wish I’d had it last night, before I shopped. I basically went off of one guy’s claim that he has a 4850 running in his 250W Shuttle and assumed that meant it’ll work in my 300W Shuttle. I guess we’ll see.
Sadly, a new PSU isn’t an option. Shuttle PSUs are a proprietary form factor, and while they do offer 450W PSUs on some of their more expensive models, mine isn’t one of them and I don’t think it’d fit in mine (and I didn’t feel like modding my case to make it fit).
The new card’s to arrive tomorrow. When it comes in I’ll run it through 3dmarks and monitor the temps and power load, see how everything holds up. The silver lining is that I’m a fair weather gamer and only play when there’s a really amazing game out. So my card is idling more often than not.
They’re both crap. If they’re both crap, then the 9600 is re-branded crapness :D
EDIT: So I wasn’t accurate about the 9600. It runs cooler and draws less watties blah blah blah
that doesn’t eclipse the shear crapness of the 9600. It’s like saying this newer turd doesn’t smell as bad as the older turd beside it. I just had to point that out, the ludicrousness of debating the merits of the 9600 over the 8600.
Oddly enough my 8800GT just flamed out a couple of days ago as well. Fortunately I always keep my previous gear, so I had a 6600GT handy to use while I RMA the 8800. Hopefully BFG hurries up with the replacement cuz WoW is pretty damn ugly and slow on this thing.
mashakos, sometimes when you’re wrong it is best to just shut up and be wrong and not say things that just make you look even wronger.
The 9600gt is getting old in the tooth at this point, but at time of release it was a very good card in terms of price/performance and it performed way better than the 8600. The 8600 is the card that was a turd and a step down from its predecessor in virtually every way except for having theoretical hardware video decoding powers that nobody could ever get to work back then anyway because Nvidia’s drivers/software for it were garbage.
