GeForce 9600 GSO very slow

you get what you pay for.....

it's a slow, old card. there is nothing really wrong with it, it's just that your expectations were too high for it. and why are you surprised that when you add a second monitor, it runs even slower? of course that will happen.

I was not aware that it was a "slow old" card. When I picked it off the shelf I thought that it was new - I obviously know nothing about this.

So I guess I'll be returning this...

Why do you need a fast video card if you're running server 08?

I'm using it at a workstation - it's my development machine - I want to develop on the same OS that the final product(s) will run on.

what price range are you looking at, give us that information and we'll tell you the best card you can get, you probably get some conflicting view's, but that's to be expected some prefer ATI some prefer Nvidia

Thanks for the offer rangers.

I'm looking to spend up to $400 for the card but will go over that if I can be convinced of the extra speed.

I have an ASUS P5E-VM HDMI motherboard with 8Gb of RAM a 300Gb Velociraptor drive and an E8500 @ 3.16GHz Core 2 Duo processor. I'm running Server 2008 x64 OS.

I use the machine as a workstation and mostly do web site development using VS2008 and other related power tools/toys.

So far I've tried the card mentioned above and before that I tried a
SAPPHIRE HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 PCI-E - but never got that to work as the driver installation crashed and the manufacturer concluded that the card was faulty.

I'd like to be able to run 2 different sized monitors off the card (and fast response time).

What do you recommend?

Benchmarks:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3341&p=13
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3341&p=14
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3341&p=15
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3341&p=16
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3341&p=17
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3341&p=18
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3341&p=19

There is also 4870x2, which is the fastest card on market, and ranks 1st place above 9800gx2. It cost $520 though, which is above your $400 budget. All will run 2 monitors.

9800gx2: $280
gtx280: $400
4870: $250
gtx260: $230
3870x2: $190
9800gtx+: $200
4850: $170
9800gtx: $150

Performance pretty much follows same pattern as price in most cases.

I think that I'm starting to understand a bit more about video cards now - thanks to everyone for taking the time to reply to my questions and the help and advice - much appreciated.

Am I correct in saying that most cards are either produced by AMD or NVIDIA? Are these the GPU manufacturers?

After looking at the links provided by dagger I'm tempted by:
NVIDIA GeForce GTX280
and
AMD Radeon HD 4870

Ignoring price which would you select?
Which one will most likely have x64 drivers that would work with Server 2008?

Once I've selected the chipset above I would still need to select a card manufacturer right? (Like Sapphire etc...)

Oh my god, stop. These people are insane. INSANE. Your card is faulty or there is a driver problem. The 9600 IS A FINE CARD. God, I can't imagine if I hadn't found this thread. The 9600 GSO should have NO PROBLEM handling the display of two monitors. There certainly shouldn't be any slowdown with one monitor.

#1 Make sure your drivers are fully compatible with that OS. Make sure it is fully documented on multiple websites.

#2 Swap out other components in your build, the fact that your 4850 was faulty and then your 9600 acts faulty seems a little odd.


Most of the time I would even go so far as to say your card is excessive for what you're doing. This is a card that would be able to handle most games at moderate resolutions.

Also, what resolution do you run either monitor at?

I'm running the monitor at 1680 x 1050 and at the moment I'm running just a single monitor because with 2 it was too slow. The card is currently running slower (or at least slows down the system) than the onboard video card.


I haven't been able to find any reference to anybody using the card on Vista x64 or Server 2008 x64.


What would you swap out to test this?

I agree that the card should be excessive because I'm not gaming on this machine.

Did you forget to plug in the pcie power connector?  

That's a good question - I definitely plugged it in but the directions were fairly ambiguous and referred to connectors that they didn't supply and so I took my best guess using what they supplied and believe that I got it right but that certainly requires more investigation.

Is there a way that I could query the power status of the card through the OS?

i cant see your PSU it could be the problem and on a side note the 4870 would be better, the vista drivers are better than nvidia's, and vista and Server 2008 are based on the same code

Swapping out components would be costly and very time consuming. However, if it runs fine with the on board video this is definitely a video card problem. What I would recommend is to contact the manufacturer of your video card and describe the problem to them and contact Nvidia and ask them if current drivers should be compatible with your OS. I know ATI and Visiontek (the manufacturer of my gfx) have a nice little built in support messaging service for technical problems like this, so Nvidia and the manufacturer of your card probably have something along the same lines.

Also, did you use the drivers that came on disk or did you download new ones from the web?

I am in contact with their technical support and we've been exchanging emails and benchmark results but no conclusions yet.

I downloaded the drivers from the web.

What kind of power supply do you have in that system? The 9600 gso can be a somewhat power hungry card. Could very well be that your PSU can't supply enough juice and maybe the card is downclocking itself.

Also, did you run a driver cleaner before you installed the card? The gso may not be the fastest card, but it should certainly run 2 monitors and be a great card as long as your not gaming at high resolutions.

Power supply is 550W.

What you need to check is the 12v+ rating on the sticker of your power supply. I think the minimum is 26 amps for that card. But a cheaper 550 watt probably can't push that much power. I've seen 580-585 watt supplies that can only push 24 amps. So the card could be starving for juice.

To give an example, I've seen 450 watt power supplies that could push 16 amps, and then 400 watt supplies push 20 amps that were better quality. So that tells you a little. And lower end manufacturers will sometimes inflate the numbers that their power supplies can push.

If your supply does not show it can push 26 amps on the 12v+ rail, and on your power supply it should say 12v+1 or something like that, if it's not showing at least 26 amps, then I think your problem is the power supply.

If that's the case, you have 2 options. Upgrade the supply or change the card. Of course you can upgrade the power supply, however there is a card from ATI now called the 4670, it should perform about the same as the 9600 gso you have, but it's only about 80 bucks. It could be you can get a refund for the card you have and do a trade, or get a refund and order it from newegg.com as they do have them in stock.

9600gso is definitely not a power hungry card. There is no chance of a non-defective 550w psu of any kind not handling it.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Powercolor/HD_4670/2...

ITS A DRIVER PROBLEM!!!
Plain and simple. Every card acts like that when the correct drivers aren't installed. I honestly don't think you are going to find a card with drivers that work on your OS but i guarantee the driver is the problem.

I agree and I have finally come to the same conclusion. I'm going to wait until the 64bit drivers mature for these cards before I try again...