Poor performance from PCI graphics card

[hatski]

Hi,

I have a dell vostro 200 slim desktop, with a 8600GT card. That woks fine and runs my main display and my LCD TV. I wanted to run a 3rd display 1280x1024 monitor which I could use for watching videos on while working so I wouldn't have to turn on my 50inch LCD TV.

I tried using the on-board graphics together with the 8600GT but the o-nboard graphics get disabled with the PCI-E 8600GT plugged in. So I bought a PCI 8400GS 512MB graphics card. From what I have seen that is the most up to date PCI graphics card available however the performance is terrible, scrolling down a web page displays bad redraw and the same goes for video especially full screen.

The drivers that are installed are the same that are installed for the 8600GT.

I don't want to messa round with changing too much if it's going to be in vein and that I must just accept that PCIx1 is just really slow. I'm just not too sure though why the performance could be so bad.

Help and suggestions needed.
Many thanks,
H.

 

[wa1]

PCI is a really slow card, plus you're running it with 3 monitors, that's a hard job...

 

[dextermat]

+1

Consider also that it's a Dell computer with vista.

How old is the computer ?

 

[gamerk316]

PCI GPU's are ancient; frankly, your performance for that GPU sounds about right.

 

[mjsharma]

pci is really slow with a capacity of 533MB/s
but pcie 1.x has a bandwith capacity of 4GB/s
you can just imagin how slow it is...

 

[hatski]

PCI is a really slow card, plus you're running it with 3 monitors, that's a hard job...

My PCI-E 8600GT powers 2 monitors and the PCI 8400GS powers one monitor.

 

[hatski]

+1

Consider also that it's a Dell computer with vista.

How old is the computer ?

It's a dell vostro 200 (about 3 years old)
Intel E4400 running at 2.66GHz per core
5GB RAM 667MHz FSB

As I mentioned in my first post even just scrolling down a web page, the redraw is quite apparent.

 

[hatski]

Oh, and I'm running Windows 7.

 

[hatimh]

Yay, I remembered my old account details.

hatski = hatimh.

 

[jrichards]

try running just the PCI card and see what performance you get out of it by itself with 1 monitor. I suspect you have way to much going on for the processor and its choking on it. The cards are comparable in performance the 8400gs actually has a higher fill rate, but the bus handicaps it. You are shooting for the moon with a submarine.....

 

[hatski]

I just tried your suggestion and it still runs badly. It must be down to the drivers being good for the PCI-E 8600GT but bad for the PCI 8400GS.

Can I run my onboard graphics card and my PCI-E 8600GT together> The on-board seems to get disabled when I plug in a graphics card.