# Albatron Launches Three PCI Low-Profile GeForce 8 Video Cards



## malware (Jul 10, 2008)

If you're on the market, looking for a card that will work on most of today's PCs, you'd be surprised to know that Albatron is launching a trio of new PCI low-profile graphics cards. Yes they are PCI, not PCI-Express compatible and they are part of the GeForce 8 generation. The cards are dubbed PCI8600GT-256X, PCI8500GT-256X, PCI8400GS-256, and represent GeForce 8600 GT, 8500 GT and 8400 GS respectively. The first two cards come equipped with GDDR3 memory, 128-bit interface and HDMI connectivity while the PCI8400GS-256 makes use of GDDR2 chips, a 64-bit interface and has no HDMI. All three cards come with 256MB memory, DVI and TV-Out connectors.





*View at TechPowerUp Main Site*


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## roberto888 (Jul 10, 2008)

Nice. My friend will love it. He hasn't got money for a new config and he hasn't got AGP or PCI-e connector on his motherboard. But has PCI. I'll buy one of this to him.


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## mdm-adph (Jul 10, 2008)

Wow -- we finally have a card to unseat the ATI X1300 PCI from its seat of power!


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## JrRacinFan (Jul 10, 2008)

I wonder how badly bottlenecked the 8500GT would be paired with a P3 @ 700Mhz. Yes, I still have that old Gateway to this day.


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## Baum (Jul 10, 2008)

I will Upgrade my Nano ITX Board with these as i only have one pci slot and sometimes the onboard GPU just laggs under XP .

If they are powerfull enought for Bf1942?


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## Mussels (Jul 10, 2008)

....huh.

well, they DO bring blu ray decoding and vista compatibility to PCI systems.


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## JrRacinFan (Jul 10, 2008)

Baum said:


> I will Upgrade my Nano ITX Board with these as i only have one pci slot and sometimes the onboard GPU just laggs under XP .
> 
> If they are powerfull enought for Bf1942?



The 8500GT would actually play BF1942 decently. The 8600GT would play it pretty well.


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## FatForester (Jul 10, 2008)

Baum said:


> I will Upgrade my Nano ITX Board with these as i only have one pci slot and sometimes the onboard GPU just laggs under XP .
> 
> If they are powerfull enought for Bf1942?



Oh yea, my 9600XT played it back in the day. Heck, that thing plays Source games great (TF2 does give it some trouble though)


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## Mussels (Jul 10, 2008)

JrRacinFan said:


> The 8500GT would actually play BF1942 decently. The 8600GT would play it pretty well.



i'd say both would own the game. the question is how much the PCI bus holds the cards back.


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## PVTCaboose1337 (Jul 10, 2008)

This is a great idea, and a good replacement for an emergency card.


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## Mussels (Jul 10, 2008)

oh and we're all ignoring that its LP with HDMI. i guess someone cares


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## xu^ (Jul 10, 2008)

damn sight better than my current emergency PCI card ..Geforce 2 MX 400 PCI 32mb


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## JrRacinFan (Jul 10, 2008)

I had just thought of something with the current single 8600GT w/ single 16x slot owners. SLi ready? LOL


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## ktr (Jul 10, 2008)

Damn, I wish these cards support hybrid power...


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## Error 404 (Jul 11, 2008)

My friend could easily use one; his current graphics card is a GeForce 5500 64 MB PCI; this'd get the framerates he's after.


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## JrRacinFan (Jul 11, 2008)

Also another item I just thought of, would Physx drivers work with these cards?


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## Mussels (Jul 11, 2008)

JrRacinFan said:


> Also another item I just thought of, would Physx drivers work with these cards?



a most intruiging thought. They are 8 series so they have to support cuda, and the ageia card is only PCI...


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## cdawall (Jul 11, 2008)

xubidoo said:


> damn sight better than my current emergency PCI card ..Geforce 2 MX 400 PCI 32mb



man and i thought my back up is bad but then again i'm actually using my BU card


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## Mussels (Jul 11, 2008)

cdawall said:


> man and i thought my back up is bad but then again i'm actually using my BU card



my backup has 512K of ram  it lets me see the bios at least.


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## cdawall (Jul 11, 2008)

Mussels said:


> my backup has 512K of ram  it lets me see the bios at least.



i have one of those in the garage its my BU's BU


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## candle_86 (Jul 11, 2008)

Mussels said:


> i'd say both would own the game. the question is how much the PCI bus holds the cards back.



well not much really depending on the game. The PCI bus will only hold them back when they request memory over the PCI bus this is the key reason AGP was faster because of sideband addressing and fast writes. So with 256mb of local memory onboard and if you keep the game at settings that are reasonable say 10x7 @ medium/high dpending on game there shouldnt be an issue as most data can be kept on the GPU. Now if it starts to fetch data your screwed


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## candle_86 (Jul 11, 2008)

lol my backup is a geforce FX5200 PCI i feel so lucky, and if i cant find a DVI adaptor for it, yes it has a single DVI port i can always throw my Riva TNT 16mb in there


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## mdm-adph (Jul 11, 2008)

candle_86 said:


> lol my backup is a geforce FX5200 PCI i feel so lucky, and if i cant find a DVI adaptor for it, yes it has a single DVI port i can always throw my Riva TNT 16mb in there



Yeah yeah, geforce -- yeah, what's with the Avatar?  Picking up where Dangle leaves off?  Or are you the same person? 

Seriously, man -- if you're going to criticize a politician, at least use some facts.  Like, for instance, because of the recent FISA ruling in America, it's now okay to call Barack Obama a liar.  I'll go along with that.

But a buddy of Osama?  I don't think so -- Osama's a Republican.  :shadedshu


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## newtekie1 (Jul 11, 2008)

The thing about these that gets me excited is the PhysX.  If nVidia unlocks PhysX support for the rest of their 8 series cards soon, these would be a perfect drop in for use as nothing other than a PhysX card.


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## OnBoard (Jul 11, 2008)

Baum said:


> I will Upgrade my Nano ITX Board with these as i only have one pci slot and sometimes the onboard GPU just laggs under XP .



Not a bad idea, have my C-16 mini-ITX closing ready, but 90W pico PSU might die with one of these in it  And I'd need a riser card and more holes to the case and it's not for heavy gaming anyways.. ..but good to know there is an option 

Wonder if all the models are that long, what is their power usage and are they cheap. And is the 8400 passive, as the system is passive (well one 80mm silent fan on top of NB as it gets hot)


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## wolf (Jul 12, 2008)

> The thing about these that gets me excited is the PhysX. If nVidia unlocks PhysX support for the rest of their 8 series cards soon, these would be a perfect drop in for use as nothing other than a PhysX card.



physx and folding


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## Mussels (Jul 12, 2008)

the only problem is that vista cant handle two video drivers at the same time (XP could, but XP crashed a lot when you did it lol) so if you do this, you need an Nvidia primary card, and the cards all need to share the one driver (meaning no betas, without modding first)

to be honest i want one  physx sounds awesome, and folding on the side too.


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## newtekie1 (Jul 12, 2008)

Mussels said:


> the only problem is that vista cant handle two video drivers at the same time (XP could, but XP crashed a lot when you did it lol) so if you do this, you need an Nvidia primary card, and the cards all need to share the one driver (meaning no betas, without modding first)
> 
> to be honest i want one  physx sounds awesome, and folding on the side too.



I've had my 3850 and 9800GTX in my Vista machine together and it handled it just fine.


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## Mussels (Jul 12, 2008)

newtekie1 said:


> I've had my 3850 and 9800GTX in my Vista machine together and it handled it just fine.



could you get both cards to start at once? i've always had vista throw an error saying the driver could not start, and only the primary card works. I did it less than 4 hours ago with a radeon 2600xt to see if anything had changed in SP1, but it didnt work.


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## MikeX (Jul 12, 2008)

*ahh*

those people with P3 and 2 can finally play WoW and Watch HD content. I wish these pci8600gt can do sli, that would be awsomm


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## candle_86 (Jul 13, 2008)

they could actully do SLI its the lack of the interface and drivers to support PCI SLI for the current gen lol. Also the improvements wouldn't be that great as data would have to use the PCI bus anyway, but it is possible to use the PCI bus as an SLI link as all slots are tired together on that massive 133mb/s bus lol


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## roberto888 (Jul 13, 2008)

That would be funny if they supporting SLI. i have 5 PCI Slots. I could use them in 3-way SLI.LOLBut i think its inpossible.


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## Mussels (Jul 13, 2008)

roberto888 said:


> But i think its inpossible.





			
				ralph wiggum said:
			
		

> Me fail english? that unpossible!





There doesnt appear to be an SLI bridge in the pictures, and as PCI slots cant really communicate between themselves like PCI-E, i'd say SLI is a no.

http://www.albatron.com.tw/public/Images/News/EN/2008/news20080709_3.gif

1,200 in 3dm06 from an 8600GT? yeah these cards might be limited.


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## Baum (Jul 13, 2008)

ah i think i will get one as my pci bus only handles one slot on my epia and everything else ist connected seperately to the NB, even the onboard gpu is agp 2x but 3dmark doesn't start at all ;-)

I will use them in my beamer rig to get vid's and old games running, if they are not tooo expensive


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## JrRacinFan (Jul 13, 2008)

Mussels said:


> There doesnt appear to be an SLI bridge in the pictures, and as PCI slots cant really communicate between themselves like PCI-E, i'd say SLI is a no.
> 
> http://www.albatron.com.tw/public/Images/News/EN/2008/news20080709_3.gif
> 
> 1,200 in 3dm06 from an 8600GT? yeah these cards might be limited.



Actually, software SLi could be possible. Worth it? I highly doubt. Whoever would purchase one in single wouldn't be looking for the latest and greatest in gaming anyways.

PS: My Asus with onboard ATi 200 Express scores a little over 1k.


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## Ketxxx (Jul 13, 2008)

It has to be said.... what the hell is the point? Apart from making it a bit easier for someone who had a VGA BIOS flash go wrong and needs a PCI VGA to reflash, I cant see any point in these.


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## JrRacinFan (Jul 13, 2008)

Ketxxx said:


> It has to be said.... what the hell is the point? Apart from making it a bit easier for someone who had a VGA BIOS flash go wrong and needs a PCI VGA to reflash, I cant see any point in these.



Actually, these would be good for those NanoITX boards that have only one PCI slot and using onboard VGA.


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## Mussels (Jul 14, 2008)

Physx
F@H
mobos with no AGP/PCI-E (ITX boards tend to have one PCI slot only)


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## mdm-adph (Jul 14, 2008)

Ketxxx said:


> It has to be said.... what the hell is the point? Apart from making it a bit easier for someone who had a VGA BIOS flash go wrong and needs a PCI VGA to reflash, I cant see any point in these.



For all those people out there using old Dells (from back when they used to strip the AGP port off the motherboards) who suddenly want to start gaming, but don't want to spend $300+ on a new computer.


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## Ketxxx (Jul 14, 2008)

Still seems very very little point to me, those cards will probably retail at what? £80-100? Not worth it IMO.


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## Mussels (Jul 14, 2008)

Ketxxx said:


> Still seems very very little point to me, those cards will probably retail at what? £80-100? Not worth it IMO.



lets hope its less than that.

Remember that these are half height too, and thats a whole different market. you have a half height PCI card with bluray decoding and HDMI out - thats a lot of power in a small space, for the HTPC market.

for the desperate gamer market, consider it this way: its still going to be a lot cheaper than buying an all new PC, and if its for media/light gaming, then it'll do fine (by light, i mean CSS everything on low)


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## PVTCaboose1337 (Jul 14, 2008)

If the cards are under $100 then I would probably be in for the cheapest, as a backup card for bios flashing etc, as my Rage IIC is getting a bit dusty.


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