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Glayven?
Glayven?
Joined: 23 Jan 2005
Posts: 13025
PostPosted: 04-24-2011 06:41 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


So I replaced my trusty Zotac 8800 GT with a Zotac 460...and installed it with the drivers that came on the disk (which were released back when Moses was living). Bad move.

The system absolutely hates the video card. My games are performing much worse than with the 8800....even load times are affected (no lie...it literally takes five times longer to load a level) and it locks up every few hours (I have to unplug it to reboot). Which is kinda weird since the vid card should recompile the shaders only once (which would slow down the load times the first time only). I've reseated the card several times, but no joy.

Also...while I was creating this thread earlier today (using nothing more than Firefox) the system locked up again (I have to unplug it to reboot).

In the last hour I've put the 8800 GT back in and the system is back to normal (with normal load times).

Questions: Is it really best practice to use the drivers that came with the card? Does anyone think updating the drivers will improve matters?




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Pestilence
Pestilence
Joined: 25 Mar 2002
Posts: 15822
PostPosted: 04-24-2011 06:44 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Using different drivers can have an impact on performance. I always try the newest ones first. Then again, you may have gotten a defective card. I have a 460 1gb and didn't experience anything like that. I would try the newest drivers for sure before doing anything else.




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Timed Out
Timed Out
Joined: 02 Aug 2000
Posts: 38063
PostPosted: 04-24-2011 07:12 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Use the latest drivers from nVidia's site.

Also, is your PSU up to the new card's requirements? A struggling PSU will cause you all kinds of lockups and wierd shit.




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I'm the dude!
I'm the dude!
Joined: 04 Feb 2002
Posts: 12498
PostPosted: 04-24-2011 08:03 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Oh, is that what they were, a disc with drivers on them? I always thought they were complimentary coasters.



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foolproof
foolproof
Joined: 11 Jan 2001
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PostPosted: 04-26-2011 09:18 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


So I'm curious, what's the deal GKY, tried the most recent drivers yet?
No offense, but that should be the first thing you do after installing new hardware.

Also, like Foo already said, if your power supply is under 450 watts, you will need to upgrade that as well to juice the 460.

See, shit like this is why I rather buy an entire new system every 3-4 years, instead of fucking about with seperate upgrades :miffed:




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Insane Quaker
Insane Quaker
Joined: 05 Nov 2010
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PostPosted: 04-26-2011 10:30 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I've had a similar experience. I also got an MSI N460 GTX and the drivers that came with it literally did nothing but tell windows there was an nvidia card in the system...and as far as I knew it knew that already. I'd always use nvidia's latest drivers....I don't see the point of using 3rd party drivers since the GPU cores are all made by nvidia, not the company you're buying the card from. The 460 is a pretty power hungry card, you'd do well to take it back and get a 560 ti instead. Additionally, I'd suggest a slightly more powerful power supply too, and something that can provide stable voltage. I go with either Seasonic or Corsair (kinda the same thing actually) I've also used a Cooler Master PSU when I was feeling cheap that powered my compiler for a while with no problems.

But really, I'd have to agree with Plan B, incremental upgrades are barely worth it given the speed that everything changes now. Looking at prices today...

I got the MSI 880GM-E43 for about 60 bucks, 8GB of DDR3/1600 for 70-ish (which for gaming you'd need 4GB, 6GB absolute max...if that) I got the top of the line T1100 6 core AMD processor for 240 bucks, for a solid gaming chip, you'd really only have to spend like...80 to 120ish on a CPU (unless you hate money and love Intel, your call) ...a cheap enough gaming case for 40 bucks, maybe 100 to 150 for a REALLY NICE power supply if you care about that, you could build a really solid computer for about 300ish~350ish bucks if you really get only what you need, and then...add on whatever you wanna spend of a video card, the 560 ti is going for 242 on google shopping. So, that's a computer that can play the latest games considerably well for like...500 dollars...give or take on shipping and junk. Now take in to account how much time you spend playing games, if you're a "hard core" gamer you might be playing more than 20 or 30 hours a week, 500 bucks every few years (and it will only get cheaper) really isn't that bad...at least to me.

Alternatively, you could try to shove a GTX 5XX/HD 69XX into a computer from a few years ago, see how that works out for ya. I think you'd find A) your cpu can't push enough bandwidth to your card, so whatever money you spent on a really nice video card can't really be fully taken advantage of by older cpus. B) you'd find you eventually have to buy a new system anyway, because of upgrade part-cross-compatibility issues. Example: you can't upgrade a certain part enough because they don't make parts for that socket/slot/whatever anymore. C) years of caked on dust are slowly killing your computer by this point


...why did I write all that...I gotta lay off the Monster...wheeeee




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Glayven?
Glayven?
Joined: 23 Jan 2005
Posts: 13025
PostPosted: 04-26-2011 11:06 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I haven't switched the cards back yet. I've downloaded the latest drivers (130 MB...wtf??) and will switch it out this weekend.

My PSU is brand new and 600 watts, so I'm not too concerned about that. However I heard someone mention a few years ago when I got the 8800 that I needed to ensure that the "rail voltage" for the PCI-E slot was "enough to run the card". This makes no sense to me since the PCI-E standard runs with a specific range of voltage...so if a component (including the PCI-E slot itself) doesn't fit the standard, it'd be pretty stupid to stick it on a motherboard claiming PCI-E support. I don't know (or believe) that it's an issue, but I thought I'd mention it.

BTW...the guy who told me about the "rail voltage" was some 17 year old at Best Buy who couldn't answer a bunch of other questions I had at the time...so I'm not too quick to think he's correct in this.




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Your Other Daddy
Your Other Daddy
Joined: 03 Dec 1999
Posts: 20012
PostPosted: 04-26-2011 11:15 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


my 600W is like 8amps off from what the 460 needs and i have no problems.

and the 130MB driver is cause of physX



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Glayven?
Glayven?
Joined: 23 Jan 2005
Posts: 13025
PostPosted: 04-26-2011 11:15 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


@VolumetricSteve and Plan B: I got the vid card because it is a literal doubling of performance. I'm the pragmatic type who usually waits for other early adopters (guinea pigs) to try out new hardware and hear their compaints, and I'm certainly not the type who needs to be on the cutting edge of gear released yesterday.

Also, regarding the drivers that came with the card and the decision to install them first: I've heard it from about a billion sources that it's best to install the drivers from the manufacturer, as they (while following the reference design) are more intimately knowledgable about exactly how their version of the card works and where it's been optimized/tweaked for performance.




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Your Other Daddy
Your Other Daddy
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Posts: 20012
PostPosted: 04-26-2011 11:20 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


they only design how the card looks, the chip is from nvidia so use nvidias driver, i have always and had no problems on many brands with nvidia chips



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I'm the dude!
I'm the dude!
Joined: 04 Feb 2002
Posts: 12498
PostPosted: 04-26-2011 03:25 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


GFY, whoever keeps telling you all this stuff, do yourself a favour and punch them in the face.

Each rail is supposed to output a certain amount of power. That's what your power supply is for in the first place, to take the total power coming in from the wall and split it off into specific amounts of power that each component requires. The only time you may have a problem is if your PSU is underpowered and unable to keep up with the demand.

All third party chip manufacturers are licensing the chip technology from nVidia. 99% of the time they are using the exact chip and PCB designs of the reference card. The only normal changes are the cooling mechanism and clock speeds, neither are affected by drivers. I had one of the 1% of cards with a slightly modified PCB, a Gainward 6800GT/Ultra, it was halfway between a GT and Ultra design intended to give a GT card the same performance as the Ultra for cheaper - but even that used normal nVidia drivers.

The only exception to video drivers are in some laptops (usually really old ones). Usually nVidia drivers will work fine too, but sometimes manufacturers will pull some crazy shit.



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Timed Out
Timed Out
Joined: 02 Aug 2000
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PostPosted: 04-26-2011 11:36 PM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


obsidian wrote:
GFY, whoever keeps telling you all this stuff, do yourself a favour and punch them in the face.


Agree.

Quote:
Each rail is supposed to output a certain amount of power. That's what your power supply is for in the first place, to take the total power coming in from the wall and split it off into specific amounts of power that each component requires. The only time you may have a problem is if your PSU is underpowered and unable to keep up with the demand.


Disagree. The PSU does indeed split things into separate rails but these rails are divided by voltage, and voltage is not power.

I could go into detail but this section of Squickipedia covers it succinctly:

Quote:
When high-powered GPUs were first introduced, typical ATX power supplies were "5 V-heavy", and could only supply 50–60% of their output in the form of 12 V power. Thus, GPU manufacturers, to ensure 200–250 watts of 12 V power (peak load, CPU+GPU), recommended power supplies of 500–600 W or higher.

More modern ATX power supplies can deliver almost all (typically 80–90%) of their total rated capacity in the form of +12 V power.

Because of this change, it is important to consider the +12 V supply capacity, rather than the overall power capacity, when using an older ATX power supply with a more recent computer.


The kid at best buy got half the story wrong with the 'PCI-e voltage' guff but he was right in essence about needing to ensure you have enough power available in the right places to run these cards. But it's the 12v rail on the PSU that's important, not the PCI-e supply.




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Insane Quaker
Insane Quaker
Joined: 05 Nov 2010
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PostPosted: 04-27-2011 10:09 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


GONNAFISTYA wrote:
@VolumetricSteve and Plan B: I got the vid card because it is a literal doubling of performance. I'm the pragmatic type who usually waits for other early adopters (guinea pigs) to try out new hardware and hear their compaints, and I'm certainly not the type who needs to be on the cutting edge of gear released yesterday.


If you gotta upgrade something, for most games, the video card is the way to go.

I was just saying that eventually, if you're(or anyone) wanting to upgrade to run something more intense down the line, there ought to come a point where the hardware you currently have will no longer be upgradable or practical to upgrade. It's the same thing as someone with a high-end AGP 8X motherboard trying to upgrade their video card today. They can...but it'd be pointless because the fastest AGP 8X card I know of off the top of my head is the (Nvidia 7800 gt ~$200) so much slower than more-efficient and faster cards available today for much less money.




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Glayven?
Glayven?
Joined: 23 Jan 2005
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PostPosted: 04-30-2011 07:14 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Ok...this was the least worthwhile upgrade I've ever done in my life.

The newest drivers have solved the stability issues within the games (no lockups or crashes) but the promised increases in performance was a complete lie. I play-tested 3 games to compare performance (without touching any of the settings) and there is no noticable difference at all. None. And the loading times are still 5 times longer than with the 8800 GT. And to top it all off I spent at least 30 minutes swapping video cables and rebooting several times and the card still refuses to work with dual monitors. Oh yeah...and it killed my sound card.

To those who suggest that I punch someone in the face for all the bad advice I've been getting, I'd rather punch the writers of the 10,000 articles who said the 460 is twice the performance of the 8800 and worth the upgrade.

What a piece of shit.




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Timed Out
Timed Out
Joined: 02 Aug 2000
Posts: 38063
PostPosted: 04-30-2011 07:38 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I didn't see if you posted your system specs anywhere else so can you post your system specs here?

If you're not seeing a performance improvement moving up 3 generations of cards, that indicates that other parts of your system may be causing a bottleneck. I'm running a 260 and it smashes my previous 8800 in modern games.




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Glayven?
Glayven?
Joined: 23 Jan 2005
Posts: 13025
PostPosted: 04-30-2011 07:47 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I could post system specs, but what's the point? Posting the specs won't change the fact that I wasted $250 on a card that is a step backwards in functionality. It won't change the fact that I can only use one monitor instead of the two that I've been using for years, it won't change the fact that load times are drastically affected and it won't change the fact that there is no increase in performance, but rather a huge, massive, insanely retarded performance decrease. I can pretty much guess that if I do post system specs, all that will happen is that someone will probably say I should upgrade my CPU next.

This was a bad purchase and I'm returning the card.




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Pestilence
Pestilence
Joined: 25 Mar 2002
Posts: 15822
PostPosted: 04-30-2011 10:55 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Well obviously somethings not right because me and the others here with a 460 aren't seeing these problems. I've seen a mountain of performance increase over my old 8800gt, and a good bit more than the 9800 gtx, or the gtx 260. Either that particular card is defective, or your other hardware is causing conflicts, or it's a software issue.




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Insane Quaker
Insane Quaker
Joined: 05 Nov 2010
Posts: 449
PostPosted: 04-30-2011 01:21 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I ran the MSI N460GTX for a while, I didn't have any issues with it. Sorry to say, it seems like you got a lemon or there's some strange conflict. If I were you, I'd try an ATI/AMD card just to see what happens. Good luck.




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Timed Out
Timed Out
Joined: 02 Aug 2000
Posts: 38063
PostPosted: 04-30-2011 05:52 PM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


GONNAFISTYA wrote:
I could post system specs, but what's the point? Posting the specs won't change the fact that I wasted $250 on a card that is a step backwards in functionality. It won't change the fact that I can only use one monitor instead of the two that I've been using for years, it won't change the fact that load times are drastically affected and it won't change the fact that there is no increase in performance, but rather a huge, massive, insanely retarded performance decrease. I can pretty much guess that if I do post system specs, all that will happen is that someone will probably say I should upgrade my CPU next.

This was a bad purchase and I'm returning the card.



Or someone might come along and say 'oh you have motherboard x? You need to upgrade the BIOS to version y to take advantage of feature z, which your card requires'.

Or whatever probably not, and someone on the Internet might criticize your system! Return it.




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Glayven?
Glayven?
Joined: 23 Jan 2005
Posts: 13025
PostPosted: 04-30-2011 11:36 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


The card was indeed a dud.

I exchanged it with a new 460 and the performance is much better, I can use dual monitors and the load times (while a bit longer than the 8800 GT) aren't ridiculously long anymore.




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Glayven?
Glayven?
Joined: 23 Jan 2005
Posts: 13025
PostPosted: 04-30-2011 11:37 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Foo wrote:
Or someone might come along and say 'oh you have motherboard x? You need to upgrade the BIOS to version y to take advantage of feature z, which your card requires'.

Or whatever probably not, and someone on the Internet might criticize your system! Return it.


Get over yourself.

And yes...I did return it. That's how I found out it was busticated.

Or perhaps would you have preferred I spent a few more days jumping through hoops for you?




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Timed Out
Timed Out
Joined: 02 Aug 2000
Posts: 38063
PostPosted: 05-01-2011 12:54 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Glad to hear you got it sorted out.

Shame you can't keep the personal differences stuff out of T&T. I still love you though.




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i liek boobies
i liek boobies
Joined: 26 Nov 2000
Posts: 11930
PostPosted: 05-01-2011 01:08 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Keeping in mind that I tend to be a bit OCD about fresh installs, I personally wouldn't use that system without a format/reinstall from scratch. Windows bloat + driver fuckaround [even though both cards were nVidia].




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