*GTX 260/280 Unofficial TPU! Thread*

[Tatty_Two]

Nice score Fit, you happy with those 295's??

 

[Fitseries3]

love em.

 

[2lowSniper]

Nice score Fit, you happy with those 295's??

lol you need to seriously ask that question? heheh

 

[CarolinaKSU]

Well, here is Physx and a 280 in a nut shell.. If you have the 2xx series cards, you don't need a physx card. I was running my 8400gs and there wasn't anything I saw as a performance gain from it.. If you have a 8800gt and 8400gs you'll see a difference.. But not with anything above a 9xxx series card. Anything after the 8xxx series Nvidia cards have it built for physx rendering. Even if the card is straight for Physx only, there won't be a change.

But, your right. For a Q9550... that is pretty sweet!

Thats the straight answer Ive been looking for regarding PhysX and the 2xx series. I started a thread about it a while ago and that was the consensus, but no one really knew for sure. I bought the damn thing since I was getting the 280 and figured why not and now i sort of regret it.. Maybe my roomate will buy it, he gets all of my secondhand stuff for the most part anyway!

 

[Cold Storm]

Thats the straight answer Ive been looking for regarding PhysX and the 2xx series. I started a thread about it a while ago and that was the consensus, but no one really knew for sure. I bought the damn thing since I was getting the 280 and figured why not and now i sort of regret it.. Maybe my roomate will buy it, he gets all of my secondhand stuff for the most part anyway!

look at it this way. Backup card for when you need a rma or check... That card can run vista ultimate 64 with no problems... So its a great backup.. Or sell it to the roomy!!! :Rockout:

 

[pepsi71ocean]

what do you guys think is the overclock needed to get a gtx 280 to shine? do you think 3.4GHz is enough or does it need to be higher?

 

[frankie827]

Thats the straight answer Ive been looking for regarding PhysX and the 2xx series. I started a thread about it a while ago and that was the consensus, but no one really knew for sure. I bought the damn thing since I was getting the 280 and figured why not and now i sort of regret it.. Maybe my roomate will buy it, he gets all of my secondhand stuff for the most part anyway!

i have a different answer lol
i have a gtx 260 and im running my friends 256mb 8600gt as a physx card

with the 8600gt enabled for physx, my vantage score was up 2225 points over the when the 8600gt was disabled

 

[Tatty_Two]

i have a different answer lol
i have a gtx 260 and im running my friends 256mb 8600gt as a physx card

with the 8600gt enabled for physx, my vantage score was up 2225 points over the when the 8600gt was disabled

Yes.....but.....however........

1. Synthetic benchmarks dont really count
2. Vantage, unlike a game is coded specifically to improve the score with a seperate PHYSX card (cause NVidia threw them a few million to help with development costs just so that in Vanatge they would get a leg up over ATi ) clever boys them NVidians!

On an aside, I might be joining this club again, GTX280's are so cheap at the moment I might just get one as I have a buyer for my 2 sonics, I can actually get in the UK, a 280 for the price of a decent 1GB HD4870.

 

[CarolinaKSU]

I'm more concerned with how did he get the GTX 260 only handling graphics and the 8600GT only handling PhysX...

I'm beginning to think no one has done it correctly. In the Nvidia control panel its either all or nothing, even though it gives you the two choices for which GPU. If you disable PhysX in one, it disables it for both cards. Hence why no matter what your score will be around 2k points higher. It seems to be the standard "gimmie" points just for having it turned on.

 

[Tatty_Two]

I'm more concerned with how did he get the GTX 260 only handling graphics and the 8600GT only handling PhysX...

I'm beginning to think no one has done it correctly. In the Nvidia control panel its either all or nothing, even though it gives you the two choices for which GPU. If you disable PhysX in one, it disables it for both cards. Hence why no matter what your score will be around 2k points higher. It seems to be the standard "gimmie" points just for having it turned on.

It's all in the software coding I beleive, with no secondry card detected, the drivers force the card to "give up" some SP's to the Physx process, with a 2nd dedicated card identified it passes all the Physx calculations to that, apparently the actual coding is completely different for "normal" rendering and Physx....this is where Cuda comes in.......I think!

This may or may not help, it does show the performance differences in Physx enabled games, albeit with just 9 series cards as the primary and was written by some Nvidia guy.......

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=31&threadid=2217300&enterthread=y

 

[OnBoard]

Hmm, now my card is stuck on 3D clocks on idle, any way to unstick it? (other than reboot).

VDDC current says 16.9A wasn't the clock supposed to be load based. Worked fine yesterday with 300/100 idle and 400/300 video.

 

[Binge]

Go back a couple driver versions 182s have sticky clocks unless you are on a GTX200 55nm revision.

 

[OnBoard]

Go back a couple driver versions 182s have sticky clocks unless you are on a GTX200 55nm revision.

Oh, currently on 180.48. Would not like to go back to 17x as they were slower, but not like this wouldn't be fast enough with those too

Are the 181.22 with the same issue then? I like the 2D clocks alot, nice low voltage and idle temps. Keeping system on 24/7 so they are important to me, was reading other forum were people wanted an option to turn it off

edit: here's more info on the stuff (and later on the thread).
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=1896418&postcount=59

 

[OnBoard]

I give up. Tried 177.93, 178.24 & 181.22, no idle clocks. Installed the newest first to test, then older ones. Though maybe it messes up the older ones too, so uninstalled NVIDIA drivers from add/remove. Windows starts and 181.22 is back again

Then used driver uninstaller, that got rid of all NVIDIA stuff, reboot and Vista starts installing driver. Takes forever (like all 180x-> drivers) and what do you know it chooses 181.22 again

I guess it's a nice feature for those that don't know how to install drivers, but it was better in XP when you could cancel it. Now it doesn't let you do that, if someone knows a way to temporarily disable would be nice.

Anyways house is heated with electricity, so it doesn't matter if GTX 280 does it, or roof now on winter. Have to worry about this issue more towards summer. Hope NVIDIA decides to stick with green and makes it work in next drivers again.

 

[Binge]

I hope so as well. I can't cleanse the drivers from my system either.

 

[ZenZimZaliben]

I give up. Tried 177.93, 178.24 & 181.22, no idle clocks. Installed the newest first to test, then older ones. Though maybe it messes up the older ones too, so uninstalled NVIDIA drivers from add/remove. Windows starts and 181.22 is back again

What are you using to verify that the clocks aren't changing?

Try using RivaTuner..the Temp Monitor application is very good.

 

[johnspack]

Same issue here since going to 181.xx drivers. My 2nd install has 17x something drivers and it still downclocks. I do use the rivatuner monitor. Very annoying as it's upto a 5c decrease when it works! Nice to see my 280 is so old that support is dropping already.....

 

[trt740]

xfx is now really smoking crack with this price all the 285s jumped

not aswell as the 260 gtx 192 they act alot like a 280 gtx and at 700 core/1500/1200 mem still fast as heck. The extra shaders make them less stable and the bios limits you to 1.15v. The extra shaders really heat this card up. This should change as EVGA release a voltage tool. After I sold the game and a rebate got mine for 234.00 shipped. It ended up being the cheapest card after that. I really wanted this card http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150334 . It would be about 304.00 after I sold the game. I just couldn't justify the near 100.00 difference. I'm getting well over a 100 frames per second in just about every game I own at max settings, but I just want a 285 GTX. If I ebayed the black edition 260gtx I could easily get 265.00 shipped for it, because it has a the cool black edition name and double lifetime warranty. Most people find that very attractive. I'm torn between want and need LOL!!!



Just found this is XFX smoking crack on this or what http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150342

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150342

 

[CarolinaKSU]

Well I was finally able to get the drivers to cooperate with me, sort of. I tried 178.24 drivers and after I ran driver sweeper and manually cleaned out the Windows folder of the new nvidia control panel and installed the old seperate PhysX one. I even thought well maybe the card really was too weak to even do anything so I swapped it out for my trusty 8800GTS 512, plenty of overkill and 100x the power of the puny 8400gs. And after getting it all straight and putting my little overclock back on the 280 and ran 3DMark my score went up.. (drumroll, please...)

-2,000 points. :shadedshu

 

[Tatty_Two]

Looks like I will have to find another card quick, just sold my 2 Sonics, it looks like it's between the 260 216 core, the 280 or the 285, I cant stretch to a 295 but might just stretch to a 4870x2....dunno, not sure, anyone heard if there is really much of a difference between the 280 and 285??

Damn just realised I need another siggie too

 

[ZenZimZaliben]

Looks like I will have to find another card quick, just sold my 2 Sonics, it looks like it's between the 260 216 core, the 280 or the 285, I cant stretch to a 295 but might just stretch to a 4870x2....dunno, not sure, anyone heard if there is really much of a difference between the 280 and 285??

Damn just realised I need another siggie too

The only difference I know of for sure is its a smaller die, which means less power, which should mean higher overclocks. The problem is I do not know what the voltage is at, and for the most part upping the voltage through bios flash has had 0 effect on gtx280s, as in the voltage will not increase.

 

[OnBoard]

What are you using to verify that the clocks aren't changing?

Try using RivaTuner..the Temp Monitor application is very good.

GPU-Z, have EVGA Precision too. Don't use RivaTuner as it doesn't work with driver verification thing on.

It was working so well once I went from 9800GTX+ to this card. Didn't uninstall drivers or nothing. Downclocks should work with rivatuner profiles, but does it change voltages? Showed 1.1125V for idle, now it's 1.1875V.

Wonder if it is a registry setting or some file. Would be easy to replace on older file in new drivers. Well at least a good reason to try those betas that pop up every other week to see if any fix

 

[Fitseries3]

 

[Fitseries3]

 

[OnBoard]

GTX 280 2D clocks FIX!

OK, here's the fix (sort of), really simple..

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=1733283&postcount=23

My 2D clock stopped working right after I extended my desktop to the 32" LCD Have it on the other DVI, just disabled other display and what do you know

Well, that's easy enough and should be even easier for NVIDIA to fix. Oh and that is with the newest 181.22 drivers. Idle went from 61C to 51C, that's what I wanted, but I do need my second display.