8500GT PCI (yes, old pci!) Long shot at playing H264@1080p!

Can someone tell me if this is possible? I've googled everywhere and can't find a definite answer.

I do have minimum cpu requirements do do so.

Athlon x2 @ 2,2GHz with 2GB of memory.

Also, if anyone as a sideways picture of the card can you upload it please? I have an asus barebone and I'm afraid it won't fit if I order the card.

This is the only picture I can find, and can't really tell how high that cooler is.




and btw, I'm new here \m/ so.. Hi everyone!

8500gt pci?

where are going to get one of them....I didn't even know they made that. I got a x1550 pci but haven't really tested it out on anything yet.

also with the cost of that card you could get a 8600gt pci-e and a MB for the same cost.

You can find it here

and buy it here


^^ that PCI bottleneck doesn't help much.. but it's the best option for an old PCI bus slot

..It's an asus pundit p1 ah1 barebone so, new board with pci-x is not an option I'm afraid..

Thats why I haven't herd of it i live in the US.

nym-ph said:

You can find it here

and buy it here


^^ that PCI bottleneck doesn't help much.. but it's the best option for an old PCI bus slot

..It's an asus pundit p1 ah1 barebone so, new board with pci-x is not an option I'm afraid..

Click to expand...

Actually it's PCI-E, not PCI-X (that was an older standard on server mobo's).

Wow, I'm amazed that this card even exists. If you think it will be good enough, then go for it. PCI will bottleneck with games, but I'm not so sure about H.264 HD video though.

Oh, and this is a single slot design. I highly doubt it is a two-slot because it takes very little to cool an 8500GT.

I read through the manual for this thing and it doesn't even mention PCI (only PCI-E and AGP). Not much help.

I doubt it would take much to run this card. Just make sure you have a decent dual/triple/quad core processor to make up for this things weak GPU when playing H.264.

Honestly, it would be better to just upgrade to a PCI-E mobo or at least a mobo with and IGP w/ Purevideo HD (NVIDIA 700 series mobo) or UVD AVIVO (from AMD/ATI). This would honestly be cheaper and more effective in the long run.

Red Falcon said:

Actually it's PCI-E, not PCI-X (that was an older standard on server mobo's).

Wow, I'm amazed that this card even exists. If you think it will be good enough, then go for it. PCI will bottleneck with games, but I'm not so sure about H.264 HD video though.

Oh, and this is a single slot design. I highly doubt it is a two-slot because it takes very little to cool an 8500GT.

I read through the manual for this thing and it doesn't even mention PCI (only PCI-E and AGP). Not much help.

I doubt it would take much to run this card. Just make sure you have a decent dual/triple/quad core processor to make up for this things weak GPU when playing H.264.

Honestly, it would be better to just upgrade to a PCI-E mobo or at least a mobo with and IGP w/ Purevideo HD (NVIDIA 700 series mobo) or UVD AVIVO (from AMD/ATI). This would honestly be cheaper and more effective in the long run.

Click to expand...

I really don't want to buy a new mobo.. plus, it's socket 939 and i'm using a pundit p1 ah1 barebone that I'm very found of (very small and quiet).

I hope you're right. I intend using it combined with a XFX 6200 also PCI for a triple monitor setup so I wont have any more PCI slots available. It's very limited in space.. The 6200 almost touches the CPU! :F

nym-ph said:

I really don't want to buy a new mobo.. plus, it's socket 939 and i'm using a pundit p1 ah1 barebone that I'm very found of (very small and quiet).

I hope you're right. I intend using it combined with a XFX 6200 also PCI for a triple monitor setup so I wont have any more PCI slots available. It's very limited in space.. The 6200 almost touches the CPU! :F

Click to expand...

I didn't realize it was a 939... yeah, stick with your mobo. However, using two video cards in PCI is going to bottleneck like hell and I can tell you right now, your videos are going to run like shit.

PCI's max bandwidth is only 133MB/s (which is very low for a card bus in modern times). Now, this isn't per port, this is for the bus itself, which includes all ports. So everytime a PCI port is used, more bandwidth is taken from the other slots.

Assuming you only have these two cards in the PCI slots, at around 66MB/s for each card, then playing H.264 @ 1920x1080 (1080p)... it's not going to work very well. If it is used by itself, then you should be ok, but using other cards in it (especially ANOTHER video card) is going to bottleneck it like crazy.

If you were just doing regular 2D desktop stuff, I would say OK. But the 8500GT's GPU is going to be doing a lot of work other than just displaying the video (needing to decode the H.264) and running on a PCI bus that is already bandwidth limited on top of another card is going to run any decent performance into the ground.


Do not put the other card in unless absolutely necessary. You will see the bottleneck once the other card is inserted for yourself. Also, your machine may actually run slower due to the processor trying to handle two cards on PCI ports (I've done this in the past - not a good idea).

Red Falcon said:

I didn't realize it was a 939... yeah, stick with your mobo. However, using two video cards in PCI is going to bottleneck like hell and I can tell you right now, your videos are going to run like shit.

PCI's max bandwidth is only 133MB/s (which is very low for a card bus in modern times). Now, this isn't per port, this is for the bus itself, which includes all ports. So everytime a PCI port is used, more bandwidth is taken from the other slots.

Assuming you only have these two cards in the PCI slots, at around 66MB/s for each card, then playing H.264 @ 1920x1080 (1080p)... it's not going to work very well. If it is used by itself, then you should be ok, but using other cards in it (especially ANOTHER video card) is going to bottleneck it like crazy.

If you were just doing regular 2D desktop stuff, I would say OK. But the 8500GT's GPU is going to be doing a lot of work other than just displaying the video (needing to decode the H.264) and running on a PCI bus that is already bandwidth limited on top of another card is going to run any decent performance into the ground.


Do not put the other card in unless absolutely necessary. You will see the bottleneck once the other card is inserted for yourself. Also, your machine may actually run slower due to the processor trying to handle two cards on PCI ports (I've done this in the past - not a good idea).

Click to expand...

Ho crap! That's bad news.

I thought about that.. :S But isn't 133MB/s for a 32bit bus? The 8500GT has a 128bit memory bus. Wont that have any impact?

I wont be using the 6200 for video.. just for simple 2D stuff on left and right monitor. 8500GT will be running on the central monitor.

Anyways, I do have a 6150 onboard (d-sub+dvi)... I might give it a try first. I wasn't planning to use it.. I've tried before but strains the CPU a bit in a multi-monitor environment.

Thanks for the quick answer!

nym-ph said:

Ho crap! That's bad news.

I thought about that.. :S But isn't 133MB/s for a 32bit bus? The 8500GT has a 128bit memory bus. Wont that have any impact?

I wont be using the 6200 for video.. just for simple 2D stuff on left and right monitor. 8500GT will be running on the central monitor.

Anyways, I do have a 6150 onboard (d-sub+dvi)... I might give it a try first. I wasn't planning to use it.. I've tried before but strains the CPU a bit in a multi-monitor environment.

Thanks for the quick answer!

Click to expand...

The 32-bit PCI bus is for the PCI bus. The 8500GT has it's own memory bus width which has nothing to do with the PCI slot, so never mind that.

It doesn't matter what the 6200 will be used for, running that with the 8500GT will cause your videos to bottleneck just because the card is simply plugged into the slot.

Also, I wouldn't use the 6150 IGP since that eats up memory bandwidth since it shares about 128MB with your system memory.

Argh! This is a bit of a tough one!

Since you want to play the 1080p H.264 videos on your 8500GT, make that your top priority above all others. Make sure your videos are played on the monitor from the 8500GT, not the 6200 or the 6150. Then I would test out how the video playback is when your 6200 is installed. If it is playing badly, try the 6150. If that is too slow... then maybe two monitors and a TV/HDTV will be the only other option (from the 8500GT).


I'm kind of in the same situation right now, but not with video cards. If you look in my sig, the RocketRAID 133 card is in a PCI slot and is housing my RAID 0 setup with 4 HDD's. Now, this by itself is a bottleneck since 4 HDD's can easily go through 133MB/s on the PCI bus for bandwidth. On top of that, my PCI-to-PCMCIA adapter (which can house either a Pre-N wireless adapter or a Dynex 10/100 ethernet adapter) is using a PCI slot and so is a 5 port USB card (w/ all ports in use). That leaves very little bandwidth for my HDD's. I would upgrade to a PCI-E 1x IDE RAID adapter, but since I don't have the money, I'm stuck with this! I feel your pain, man!

Red Falcon said:

I'm kind of in the same situation right now, but not with video cards. If you look in my sig, the RocketRAID 133 card is in a PCI slot and is housing my RAID 0 setup with 4 HDD's. Now, this by itself is a bottleneck since 4 HDD's can easily go through 133MB/s on the PCI bus for bandwidth. On top of that, my PCI-to-PCMCIA adapter (which can house either a Pre-N wireless adapter or a Dynex 10/100 ethernet adapter) is using a PCI slot and so is a 5 port USB card (w/ all ports in use). That leaves very little bandwidth for my HDD's. I would upgrade to a PCI-E 1x IDE RAID adapter, but since I don't have the money, I'm stuck with this! I feel your pain, man!

Click to expand...

You're even more stuck then I am I guess.. That's really not a good idea! 4 HDD's sharing bandwidth with all those cards...I mean, while you don't have the money for it, why not just use the onboard IDE?

I really don't know if this is possible but, couldn't you use 2 pci-e 1x for all 4 HDD's? Two raid controllers with 2HDD's each? Your board does have 2 pci-e.. that would be cheaper I guess?!

nym-ph said:

You're even more stuck then I am I guess.. That's really not a good idea! 4 HDD's sharing bandwidth with all those cards...I mean, while you don't have the money for it, why not just use the onboard IDE?

I really don't know if this is possible but, couldn't you use 2 pci-x 1x for all 4 HDD's? Two raid controllers with 2HDD's each? That would be cheaper I guess?!

Click to expand...

Heh, I'm actually using my onboard IDE slot right now (my mobo only has one). It is running my 5th HDD which is used to save movies and high quality FLAC and WAV music files. The other port is for my DVD burner.

Newegg sells a PCI-E 1x IDE adapter with two ports on it (4 devices effective). My only problem is since I am going to college, $$$ is non-existent with me. The 4 HDD's I'm using were free and since I didn't have enough for a modern SATA-II drive, these had to do. I wouldn't really need two PCI-E 1x cards for these since 4 IDE Ultra-100 drives couldn't bottleneck 500MB/s on PCI-E 1x.

So, I'm using six IDE drives. Wow, sounds like server from the 90's!