Graphic card

[farscapeone]

My ASUS GeForce 7300GT died on me so I decided to to replace it with a brand new MSI GeForce 9600GT 2D512. It looked like a nice piece of hardware to me and I eventually bought it.

If anybody have this card please share the experience with me.

I stoped folowing the market some time ago and now there's too much cards to choose from. Aldhough I allredy bought it I would stil like to know if it's reliable and stuff like that.

[ichwar]

I don't have experience with the MSI GeForce cards, but I can tell you that you'll find the 9600 chipset to be a good deal faster than your 7300. Up to 60% faster is what another member on the guru3d forums claims.

[Smith6612]

The GeForce 9600GT is basically the same as a GeForce 8600GT, but with the new G92 core and it runs cooler. You'll be happy with the 9600GT. My friend moved up from an Intel GMA card to an 8600GT on my recommendation and he's loved it ever since. Just make sure you give your video card enough space for air, and your case has decent cooling, and don't be surprised if the card you got is running at some insane temperatures if it is a single slotter. Back when I had 8800GTs in my current gaming box, those 8800GTs under full load (single slotters) would hit a high temp of 98 celcius and the fans would be spinning like crazy and then after an hour of full load the cards would be down to 95 celcius. My current GTX280s are dual slotters and have larger fans than the 8800GTs, and they idle at 40 celcius, and under full load during "moderate" overclocking go no higher than 60 celcius. Right now I'm repairing a PC for someone which has a GeForce 7500LE in the case. The card idles at 80 Celcius (way too hot for idle temp in my opinion, installing SpeedFan at the moment to force the card's fan faster) and this is due to the case's poor air circulation, plus the card's small heatsink and fan, and under load when torture testing it, it'll peak out at a max temp of 102 celcius D: . Yet again, this PC has no cooling what so ever at the bottom of the case, which is where one hard drive (running at 42 celcius :\) and the video card/TV tuner/sound card/wireless card is running, so temps are pretty hot down there. I'm probably going to stick in a 250mm fan into this box to get things running cooler, as I know with temps like these, the box will not last very long. Only thing that really has cooling in this box is the upper parts of the box, and the processor. PC is an HP Pavilion m7667c. Wire management is very poor in this PC I'm repairing though (I can't even get to the SATA cables!) so I'd have to rewire/reassemble the PC just to install the fan.

[steronius]

your notes on heat came in handy, just happens, i bought a xotac geforce 9600gt today, looking forward to testing it.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814500043

of course i'm not PCIe 2.0, only 1.0
want a 64GB SSD soon.

[ichwar]

want a 64GB SSD soon.

They aren't what they make them out to be. They can only be written to a few million times, and if you use it alot you'll find that happens very quickly.

[Smith6612]

your notes on heat came in handy, just happens, i bought a xotac geforce 9600gt today, looking forward to testing it.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814500043

of course i'm not PCIe 2.0, only 1.0
want a 64GB SSD soon.

Stick with the Seagate Barracuda drives and those other high RPM SATA II/III drives. The SSDs still have a ways to go before they're usable for heavy use. After a couple million of writes the drive is toast. Reads are unlimited though. This is why the page file on many netbooks are disabled, simply due to this reason. All I need to do is load up one of my hard drive stressing programs (measures total drive throughput and speed capacity) and run it overnight, and I can pretty much guarantee you that the SSD would be just about toast, not to mention running very warm due to the heavy load on it.

May I also take note, right now, I'm working on a PC someone gave to me to fix up. It's an HP Pavilion m7667c. On this system, the wiring job is TERRIBLE (all the cables are clumped between the drives the CPU for power, the SATA cables are all over the place, one was bent at an angle greater than 90 degrees at the connector point which I fixed up after fighting the power cables, and of course, wires are all over the place. This is making cooling on this box very inefficient, especially since it only has a PSU fan, case fan, CPU fan and a GPU fan. When I ran a torture test on this PC, the processor at idle was at 32 Celsius on both cores, and the GPU (Geforce 7500 LE) was idling at 69 Celsius. When the test began, within a minute the GPU's core broken the 102 Celsius barrier, which is when I stopped torturing it. The CPU ran for a good 10 minutes before getting close to 60 Celsius. This is one thing I think HP really needs to improve on, as well as any other PC maker. Over the boiling point of water on a GPU's core in terms of temp is ridiculous, or should I say ludicrous. Now, I can improve the cooling on this, however I can't as the box is cramped as it is with PCI-PCI Press cards, cables all over the place and such, the box has poor cooling to the PCI cards, and I can't fit in any room for a better heatsink/fan for the card. I can apply some Arctic Silver that I use on my gaming PC, however I highly doubt that'll do much to the card considering it has a lack of cool air coming to it, and I'd probably wind up melting it anyways from the heat. The CPU, that's due to the power cables and poor air flow in the case.

When you're a gamer and you build your own PCs (many of the PCs in my home have been built by me, other than the hand-me-downs I've gotten), you'll know the importance of proper wire management (I run SATA cables on one side of the case, power on the other, and anything else at the bottom of the case keeping the middle free, bringing cables out of the "cluster" to connect things at their proper bend radius when needed, which leaves tons of room for cooling/expanding and minimal mess. Looks like the inside of a Mac Pro so to speak), proper cooling, what will work the best with what, and especially massive cases (none of that small crap!). I treat PC building as an artwork so to speak, and heck does it keep hardware going and lasting. My Gaming PC is only being cooled by fans, and it kicks the butt of just about every Pre-built PC I've seen even when overclocking.

But still, this HP PC which I'm fixing up at the moment is used as a DVR/Internet/Gaming machine for the family. It's on 24/7 and with temps like this even after I blew out the crapload of dust I found in the PC (mainly in the heatsinks) with an airgun hooked up to a 6 gallon air compressor (this does wonders!) and then ran Torture tests on it, I'm surprised I haven't seen any Thermal Shutdown errors in any of the logs and that the GeForce card isn't fried/artifacting yet.

[farscapeone]

Thanks people (especially Smith6612 ). I built all my computers and I'm aware of cooling problems.

My EVEREST Ultimate Edition says:
- CPU (Intel E2160) Idle = 40C
- GPU Diod (MSI N9600GT 2D512) Idle = 46C with fan speed at 35%
I think that's good enough.

And here's the link to specifications for my card:
http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=pr...6&prod_no=1667

By the way 9600GT is G94 not G92
Here's a grate article about it:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...gt,1780-3.html

And finally, how do they expect us to follow the market :nuts: If you don't know what I'm talking about just visit the link below. Especially look at 9600GT versions. And this is only MSI we're talking about.

http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=pr...30&cat2_no=136

EDIT:
I visited the nVidia web site (http://www.nvidia.com/object/product...9600gt_us.html) to see some more global specs for 9600GT and I saw that max temperature is 105C. Does that include cards made by MSI and other manufacturers or that's equal to all G94 chips that 9600GT uses?

[Smith6612]

Thanks people (especially Smith6612 ). I built all my computers and I'm aware of cooling problems.

My EVEREST Ultimate Edition says:
- CPU (Intel E2160) Idle = 40C
- GPU Diod (MSI N9600GT 2D512) Idle = 46C with fan speed at 35%
I think that's good enough.

And here's the link to specifications for my card:
http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=pr...6&prod_no=1667

By the way 9600GT is G94 not G92
Here's a grate article about it:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...gt,1780-3.html

And finally, how do they expect us to follow the market :nuts: If you don't know what I'm talking about just visit the link below. Especially look at 9600GT versions. And this is only MSI we're talking about.

http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=pr...30&cat2_no=136

EDIT:
I visited the nVidia web site (http://www.nvidia.com/object/product...9600gt_us.html) to see some more global specs for 9600GT and I saw that max temperature is 105C. Does that include cards made by MSI and other manufacturers or that's equal to all G94 chips that 9600GT uses?

I might have been thinking about the GeForce 8 series cards when I was posting this, considering how identical the 9 series cards are to the 8 series cards. The G94 chipset is in fact a more efficient chipset that runs cooler, which is one of the reasons why nVidia released the 9 series cards.

[lmstfy]

Is there any super affordable graphics cards out?

[ichwar]

Is there any super affordable graphics cards out?

Yeah, if all you want is just cheapness, you can pick up one of those sparkler cards for 25 bucks. I doubt me that you'd be pleased with the performance though.