do 8600 gts and 8600 gt use same drivers? & sli?

M

multi-tasking_guy

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 16, 2017
Messages
142
currently, i have a geforce 8600 gts,

i found another geforce 8600 online for 15 bucks, the only difference is , that it's a gs and not a gts

question 1: would the gts and gt, use exactly the same drivers?

the gts 8600 is sli compatiable, but
question 2: would these 2 cards work in sli? or i would have to get another gts? and not gs


it's just for testing, im sure i could negotiate a lower price from the guy, but im not sure if i should that extra "s" would make a difference in drivers and compatibility
 
Same drivers, not sure if they will sli though, I presume they will as they both 8600gt although one is gts, but it might be a case of messing with the bios on one card?

Also, you would of been better picking up a single 8800 than two 8600s
 
Question 1: They should be able to use the same driver.

Question 2: No, at least per user comment on the GeForce forum.
 
This is 2017....


Is there a reason why you want to use an 8600gts or gs?

You can literally pick up just about any other card on the market for dirt cheap and it would be faster than an 8600gts SLI...


For reference, the 8600gs is a stripped down card, and isn't even close to the performance of an 8600gts.


https://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/1767/geforce-8600-gs

vs

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Twintech/GeForce_8600_GTS

8600gs

16 shaders
8 rops

GPU Clock: 540 MHz
Shader Clock: 1190 MHz


8600gts
32 shaders
8 rops

Core Clock: 675 MHz
Shader Clock: 1450 MHz


The 8600gts can likely boast more than 2x performance of the gs in some scenarios. But the 8600gts is going to get smoked by even an 8800gt. Even with SLI I doubt the 8600gts could overcome the performance of an 8800gts, which I've given all of mine away to friends for free.


Probably one of the faster old gems would like like a GTX 550ti. Lots of people are getting rid of those to upgrade to 10 series cards like the GTX 1050, so it looks like those are going for cheap. I can't even find a good comparison, but that card should be at least 5x faster than what you have now.


I'm just throwing that out there, but I'm guessing you just want to play around with SLI for the sake of playing around with SLI. It's actually hard to even find articles about someone attempting SLI on those mid range cards, so I can't tell you what to expect if you play around with it. Keep in mind that if you want to do SLI, it HAS to be another 8600GTS. Can't be an 8600GT, GS, and probably won't even play well if it's an OC'ed 8600GTS and you have a non OC'ed card. SLI was quite finicky back in the day so your bet best was always 2 matching cards from the same manufacturer.
 
If it did work in sli, it would downlink to the slowest card. Which would be a total waste.

Put that $15 toward any single card for around $50 And you will get literally 5x the performance.
 
i just want to buy the video card to do some testing using xinerama in linux,
i won't be using it afterwards,

i already have a gtx970 in my main desktop
 
If you want to do SLI then the two cards need to be the same 'type', i.e. 8600 GT + 8600 GT or 8600 GTS + 8600 GTS.
 
multi-tasking_guy said:
i just want to buy the video card to do some testing using xinerama in linux,
i won't be using it afterwards,

i already have a gtx970 in my main desktop
Click to expand...

You still haven't told us why you need SLI. Last time I checked, you could run Linux pretty competently off a single graphics card.

A new GT 710 costs as much as those to cards will in SLI, and performs better while using a fraction of the power.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814137199&cm_re=gt_710-_-14-137-199-_-Product
 
I have 2 problem's i'm trying to figure out:

I have 2 video cards in a linux system, They are different models, but both nvidia,

Currently, there is 2 screens hooked up to each video cards, for a total of 4 monitors,

2 monitors on bottom, and 2 monitors on top

The problem is all applications cannot run freely on all for monitors, for example,,

if i open firefox on the bottom monitors, then firefox can only run on the 2 bottom monitors,
if i open firefox on the top monitors, then firefox can only run on the 2 top monitors

video card 1 - bottom monitors,
video card 2 - top monitors

so i wanted to know if i installed 2 of the same video cards, if this problem still persists



-Solved
1. Will applications be able to run freely throughout all 4 monitors if i sli the video cards,
-solved, when you sli 2 video cards i will not be able to use 4 monitors, i will be able only to use 2 monitors,



----



Ok, so it means sli is not important, but i still have another problem,



In order for me to get applications to work on all 4 monitors, i have to enabled something called "xinerama" in the nvidia settings,

Then all 4 monitors work! even though they are different video card models, it still works


BUT

with xinerama enabled its slow! the more applications i have, the slower it is, moving applications from screen to screen,

so im trying to figure out is:

2. weather the reason xinerama is slow, is because i have 2 different video cards and one of the video card is a lot older than the other,
because xinerama combines both video cards, im assuming maybe this is the reason.


so i want to get the same type of video card,

3, to see if i have 2 of the same video cards, will i be able to move all applications freely without enabling xinerama




it's all very confusing, i just need a cheap video card to try this out, im not willing to spend more than 20 bucks to try this out, and there is some video cards online in my city, which im thinking of picking up
then selling it back

it seems no one knows the answers to my questions anywhere, not many people run multi-monitors on a linux system

on windows, it was a breeze, plug and play, i had 3 different video cards and there was no need to configure them, all monitors worked perfect
 
You would be better picking up a cheap old card that has 4 outputs ranging from hdmi, dvi display port and vga or a mixture of those options.

If you can get an old card with 4 outputs then you will get your 4 monitors working as you want them to.
 
what if i want 8 monitors, i will still need 2 video cards,

so then i will still have this problem,


yes, i could buy a video card with 4 outputs(which i already have on my main desktop), but the important thing is for me to solve this problem not avoid it
 
i tried several linux forums but no one seems to know, most people run 1-3 monitors, which only requires 1 video card,


but from the link you sent me, i believe i got my answer, that dude says:

Code: 
I have 2 Nvidia NVS Quadro 285 cards and if I turn off twinview & turn on xinerma the performance is horrific.


so the answer is, it won't matter if i have two of the same video cards, i will still have the xinerama lagging problem


in the future
i was planning on getting another gtx 970, so i could move applications between all 8 monitors,
but since i won't be able to on all 8 monitors, and xinerama is slow, then its not worth getting another 970


i have 2 options left,

wait until nvidia improves their drivers for linux
or
buy this card 8 monitors on one card!!
https://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA66K3XY7797
14-132-054-08.jpg








i like my gtx 970, i don't really want to sell it

life is full of problems!!











bah hum bug
 
You've probably searched this to exhaustion but as someone who used to dabble with Linux distros in the past you got my Linux bug back. The few pages I came across mention abandoning Xinerama altogether. One interesting post is in https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/...onf-how-to-account-for-pci-bus-busid-change-/. Go down to SheepReaper's post and see if this makes sense or works for your particular setup. I do believe that the person is not using SLI at all which means that an 8600 GT and 8600 GTS would potentially work here (two independent cards).

IIRC you're only considering SLI as it would present a single viewport to Xinerama but there appear to be quite a few posts suggesting setting up two or more framebuffers and present those disparate framebuffers to X. Another post, http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/304.132/README/configtwinview.html, suggests using the nVidia control panel to do something very similar.

Again, I apologize if these approaches have already been considered and discarded in your quest.
 
3rd option: switch to Windows, where these multi-monitor features are far-better supported?

I've never head a complaint about multi-monitor slowing down performance in Windows. It's corner cases like that that keep people coming back to Windows, rather than deal with the pain.
 
you are right, windows is the master at multi-monitor, never had a problem, pure plug and play,
windows is great,

but i will most likely never return to windows, i love linux much better than windows,
i find linux much more efficient, and easier to find any program, and best of all, they are all free,

it was difficult to use at first, but i have been using it for almost 2 years, i'm getting better at the command line,

i'll probably never return to windows
 
Meanwhile, you will probably never solve this problem without learning to write driver code...I'm out.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top