Hi guys,

I'm begging for any help/assistance with my graphics card issue. I have an Nvidia 8500GT (PCI - not PCI-e) running on my Leopard PC perfectly silky smooth (installed via NVInstaller v41), but Xbench only scores it as a 46.33 (on Quartz GT - 33.58 & OpenGL GT - 74.71 tests).

I know, sh#t right???... This would never usually bother me, but I'm sure that my onboard GMA950 does better than this???

The only real reason I investigated this was, I was trying to run the Call of Duty 2 demo; only to be greeted by audio but a BLACK SCREEN??? I have also tried Unreal Tournament 2004 and Tomb Raider Anniversary all with the same result = blank black screen. (BTW System Profiler correctly detects it 256MB QE/CI Enabled - NVInject 0.21)

Any ideas?...

Anything?... Anyone?... Help Me!!! SOS Mayday, mayday!

Please...err...pretty please??? With a cherry on top!

Im not trying to be rude but your card isnt really a performance model. pci has limited bandwidth and is a antiquated for video cards,i didnt even know pci vid cards were being made anymore. so the fact that its working should satisfy you lol. My sister had an 8400 pci-e which was horrible so i would imagine an 8500 having similar specs. Oh and i just read your second post, when using a pci 8500 lets stick to word processing it wont handle any kind of game let alone call of duty, just cause it has an 8 in front of it doesn't mean its a better than a lower nu,ber cardcard , a 7900 or 6600 will destroy a 8500 or 8400. your best bet it to rma it for a different card.

Hi David86,

Your not at all being rude, frankly I really appreciate your honesty. Yes your right PCI alone does suck, but that is all my motherboard supports (except onboard Intel GMA950), and the 8500GT was the most powerful PCI only graphics card available on the market But I thought the specs would at least be good enough to run Unreal Tournament 2K4 my card & specs are listed here: http://www.sparkle.com.tw/product_detail.a...&sub_id=160

Personally speaking, I think they should be more than enough for the job (EDIT - evidently not ).

Model number : SF-PC85GT256U2 Passive
Graphics Processing : NVIDIA GeForce 8500GT
Core Clock : 450 MHz
Memory Type : 256MB DDR2
Memory Interface : 128-Bit
Shader Clock : 900 MHz
Bus Type : PCI
RAMDAC : 400 MHz

They card is also only supposed to a bit slower than the 8600 but not crushingly slower. The graphics card specs required for Call of Duty 2 are: • Supported Video cards: NVIDIA GeForce 5200, 6600, 6800, 7800 ATI Radeon 9600, 9650, 9700, 9800, X600, X800, X850 (Universal Binary Version). Surely the 8500GT can beat an old Radeon 9600??? Right?...

What I cant wrap my head around is why would Sparkle release a PCI graphics card that cant even come close to it's alternative interfaces i.e. AGP/PCI-e in terms of performance (it aint really a 8500GT then is it). I mean what would be the point of releasing the 8500GT why not just stop at the GeForce 3 series for PCI? Or even just chuck a 8800GTX on the circuit board if it aint gonna make any difference if the bottle neck is just the PCI interface??? I mean some idiot, like me, would still buy it thinking "WOW I gotta PCI 8800GTX!".

Again, I must thank you for your reply nonetheless. Your a legend mate And your right, I can return it but I thinking that if this is the best/highest spec card available on PCI then I may as well keep it, as the others can only be worse right?...

Are you sure it doesn't support pci-e , i checked asus motherboards with identical specs to yours and they all include pci-e. Again not trying to be condescending lol, i try to help people getting into os x so i need to assume they are beginners unless they state otherwise lol. And like i mention earlier a newer series, such as 8000 or 7000, doesnt mean better performance. for instance 6600 will out perform an 8400 and a 7900 will outperform an 8600 by alot. so the prior series higher model will still beat the hell out of the new series midrange and entry level video cards. And if asus really did go out of there way to sell you a bare bone tower with no pci-e slot try to return it or if you really want better performance you can get a gigbyte board which is os x compatible for about 50$.