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8800 GT & S939 boards

joedeath332

joedeath332

joedeath332

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Joined
24 Jun 2003
Posts
1,647
I currently use the following S939 boards ,, and am looking to upgrade from an x1950xt to one of the revised 8800 gts , or even the 8800 gt.
However prior to release there was so much contradiction with 1 person saying pci e 2.0 was not fully backwards compatable,, yet other sites were saying it was backwards compatable.
So now the 8800 gt's have finally been released is anyone here using one in a S939 board , and do they work at full speed or a reduced speed if they work ?

And Will they work with the following boards that i have, as i really dont want to change MB etc just yet.

A8N-SLI Premium
DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 Ultra-D
 
PCIe 2.0 supports double rate transfer across the interface compared to 1.x so in theory there is a performance boost by getting data to the card faster ... but I think the general feeling is that this is going to be neglible - I remember in the past people doing experiments where they were able to force a gfx card to 8x, 4x, 2x or even 1x mode and I think only found a noticeable effect on performance when interface was throttled back to 1x or 2x ... i.e. transfer speed to the gfx card was nowhere near the limiting factor - clear amount of data has probably increased since then but still not likely to be major factor.

Where PCIe 2.0 will have a major effect is at the low-end of the gfx market where the increased transfer rate over the PCIe 2.0 interface will really help performance of the cards that use system memory to supplement a small amount (~32kB) of on card memory. I've read opinions that say the ATi are now very well placed to clean up in that market since 2400 and 2600 are already PCIe 2.0 designs.

N.b. while PCIe 2.0 can signal at double speed the PCI-SIG FAQs explain that cards must default to signalling usign PCI 1.x speed and only switch to faster speed if requested to (by a mboard that can handle PCI 2.0). Also, I think the other major change for PCI 2.0 gfx cards is increase in power that can be extracted from the PCIe slot ... however, manufacturers would be mad not to leave an extra power input on the card to provide the extra juice as is done at present.
 
The other thing the PCI 2.0 increased transfer rate allows is 'software Crossfire'. That's recently been added by ATI, but is probably only relevant to the lower end cards since higher end ones would need a to transfer even more data. Should allow Crossfire on SLI boards apparently :)
 
> Suppose is bit like the AGP days of x2,x4,x8

Yup, the number of people saying that 8800GT wouldn't work on PCIe 1.x recently reminded me of the comments I kept reading saying I couldn't run an AGP 8X card on my then AGP 4X-only mboard a couple of years back ... virtually everything I found via google categorically stated that 8X was utterly incompatible with 4X ... until I found a ref to the 8X standards defs which showed that there was "pure 8X" (which was incompatible with 4X) but also "8X with 4X compatibility" ... no prizes for guessing which version everyone implemented!

I suspect these standards evolve with both backwards and forwards compatibility in mind. I.e. new standard only defines what is needed for its baseline specification and then adds on an extra backwards compatibility extension. That way cards to new standard can be done using the extension so are compatible with both old and new standards ... but since the compatibility with old standard is not in the baseline spec then a future standard development (e.g. PCIe 3.0) can decide on basis of market at the time can add extension for backwards compatibility with previous generation baseline without having to also support everything from year 0.
 
CodeThief said:
Don't write the GT off just yet, it's entirely likely I've done something stupid or something is wrong with my gear :)

Dave
Click to expand...

Not for a second have i written of the 8800GT ,, i think it is a super card from what peps are saying, but atm i do not have the funds to buy one,, and when i do have the funds the GTS will be out,,so is best to get one of them i recon :D :D
 
My friend got this card yesterday and it works in the ASROCK Dual939 SATA II board. He got around 7140 on 06 i think it was and only has a 3800X2 at stock. It should work on those DFI boards but to make sure i will try and steal the card off him sometime today and see what i get from 06. Im using a DFI SLi-D and a 3800X2 at 2.7GHz (Currently use a 8800 320Mb and get around 8940 on 06) So be good to see what the difference is like, i doubt it will be a lot as its clearly a cpu bottle neck.
 
Chris19 said:
My friend got this card yesterday and it works in the ASROCK Dual939 SATA II board. He got around 7140 on 06 i think it was and only has a 3800X2 at stock. It should work on those DFI boards but to make sure i will try and steal the card off him sometime today and see what i get from 06. Im using a DFI SLi-D and a 3800X2 at 2.7GHz (Currently use a 8800 320Mb and get around 8940 on 06) So be good to see what the difference is like, i doubt it will be a lot as its clearly a cpu bottle neck.
Click to expand...
Will deff give a good comparison between it and the 8800 320mb :D
 
Chris19 said:
My friend got this card yesterday and it works in the ASROCK Dual939 SATA II board. He got around 7140 on 06 i think it was and only has a 3800X2 at stock. It should work on those DFI boards but to make sure i will try and steal the card off him sometime today and see what i get from 06. Im using a DFI SLi-D and a 3800X2 at 2.7GHz (Currently use a 8800 320Mb and get around 8940 on 06) So be good to see what the difference is like, i doubt it will be a lot as its clearly a cpu bottle neck.
Click to expand...

Ok so that basically says my 3dMark results are correct then. 7140 on a dual core CPU and 8940 on a dual core, I get 6500 on a single core.

Dave
 
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