somecallmeTim
[H]F Junkie
- Joined
- May 28, 2001
- Messages
- 9,565
After finding an eVGA 8800GT "superclocked" in-stock, buying it, installing it, I read countless horror stories in here about over heating, fires, death of the neighbor's puppies, driver issues, artifacting, noise, lack of performanace, and so on I was a bit worried.
The card got here days before the rest of my "moslty" new system so I thought I would give it a run in the old rig giving my trusty BFG7800GT a break:
AMD Opteron 175 @ 2.4 GHz
4 x 512 Ballistic PC3200
ASUS A8N-SLi Premium
Seasonic S12 550w PSU
and various SATA HDs and DVDR
I run DC, shut down, install the 8800GT, boot into safe mode, reboot and then install the drivers. This was on an old install of XP Pro ... so I was wondering what was going to happen. Well, I was blown away. No issues. BF2 ran smoother than it ever did, Crysis was nice and smooth. I didn't notice any difference in any HL2 based games since the 7800GT was plenty for those. NWN2 was nicer, ET:QW ran smoother.
Was I missing something that everyone else seems to have gotten? I expected my system to burst into flames and my framerates drop to FX5200 levels. Never happened.
So, I build the new rig with the 8800GT:
AMD 5000+ Black Edition
Gigabyte S series 570 SLi mobo
2 x 1 GB Ballistix PC6400
same S12 PSU
same HD's, and a spiffy new Samsung SATA DVDR
I loaded Vista Ultimate 64 bit on it, patched, rebooted, more patching, more drivers, more updates -- you know how it goes. I reinstalled all my games and apps, patched them as well and once again, I am just not seeing all the "issues" that everyone else seems to be reporting. The GPU stays cool, framerates are nice, I have the eye-candy cranked up, it's all running smoothly. I'm completely impressed with my 8800GT.
To make things WORSE... I removed the nVidia drivers and updated the new WHQL drivers and guess what... things got BETTER!
Well, that about wraps up my story -- sorry that there was no horror in it and I reported a great experience with my 8800GT. My 10yo daughter is enjoying the old rig with a fresh install of XP too... We killed a bunch of critters together last night on a private Lineage 2 server (yah, it's an older MMO, but it's free and we have fun). Not the biggest tax on the card, but I'm ran on my 20" WS at 1680x105 "maxed" and her on the 32" LCD HDTV at 720p (text was too small at 1080i) -- the "old box" is also my Media box.
Anyone else have a good experience with their 8800GT, or is this a fluke?
The card got here days before the rest of my "moslty" new system so I thought I would give it a run in the old rig giving my trusty BFG7800GT a break:
AMD Opteron 175 @ 2.4 GHz
4 x 512 Ballistic PC3200
ASUS A8N-SLi Premium
Seasonic S12 550w PSU
and various SATA HDs and DVDR
I run DC, shut down, install the 8800GT, boot into safe mode, reboot and then install the drivers. This was on an old install of XP Pro ... so I was wondering what was going to happen. Well, I was blown away. No issues. BF2 ran smoother than it ever did, Crysis was nice and smooth. I didn't notice any difference in any HL2 based games since the 7800GT was plenty for those. NWN2 was nicer, ET:QW ran smoother.
Was I missing something that everyone else seems to have gotten? I expected my system to burst into flames and my framerates drop to FX5200 levels. Never happened.
So, I build the new rig with the 8800GT:
AMD 5000+ Black Edition
Gigabyte S series 570 SLi mobo
2 x 1 GB Ballistix PC6400
same S12 PSU
same HD's, and a spiffy new Samsung SATA DVDR
I loaded Vista Ultimate 64 bit on it, patched, rebooted, more patching, more drivers, more updates -- you know how it goes. I reinstalled all my games and apps, patched them as well and once again, I am just not seeing all the "issues" that everyone else seems to be reporting. The GPU stays cool, framerates are nice, I have the eye-candy cranked up, it's all running smoothly. I'm completely impressed with my 8800GT.
To make things WORSE... I removed the nVidia drivers and updated the new WHQL drivers and guess what... things got BETTER!
Well, that about wraps up my story -- sorry that there was no horror in it and I reported a great experience with my 8800GT. My 10yo daughter is enjoying the old rig with a fresh install of XP too... We killed a bunch of critters together last night on a private Lineage 2 server (yah, it's an older MMO, but it's free and we have fun). Not the biggest tax on the card, but I'm ran on my 20" WS at 1680x105 "maxed" and her on the 32" LCD HDTV at 720p (text was too small at 1080i) -- the "old box" is also my Media box.
Anyone else have a good experience with their 8800GT, or is this a fluke?