Running multiple cards, 8400GS slow?

Good evening. I've got a new system I'm putting together and I plan on having 5 or 6 screens hooked up (let's not ask why for now ). Right now I'm using a GTS 250, the motherboard integrated 9400GT, and an 8400GS PCI card. Everything works fine (aero, video, 3d etc.) on 4 screens using the 2 onboard and 2 from the GTS 250. However, the 8400GS seems to be running pretty terribly. Aero being on or off doesn't seem to make a difference. Just dragging explorer windows around chokes it and running firefox full screen is unusable. I would think an 8400GS should be capable of at least basic 2d acceleration and handle some mild 3d as well. Running 1600x1200 resolution.

I have tried removing all drivers and reinstalling them but that made no difference. Any video card experts out there got any ideas? I'm running windows 7 64bit.

I've got an 8400GS 512MB card myself, but in a PCIe x16 version.

The 8400GS series doesn't exactly perform all that great from my experience, I think it's mainly meant just for regular daily use (surfing the web, checking email, etc). For me it works fine at surfing the web, sending and receiving emails and whatnot, gives terrible frame rates at gaming and/or benchmarks though.

I don't have too much trouble with mine, though I'm using a much lower resolution (1152x864).

Tech Tweaker said:

I've got an 8400GS 512MB card myself, but in a PCIe x16 version.

The 8400GS series doesn't exactly perform all that great from my experience, I think it's mainly meant just for regular daily use (surfing the web, checking email, etc). For me it works fine at surfing the web, sending and receiving emails and whatnot, gives terrible frame rates at gaming and/or benchmarks though.

I don't have too much trouble with mine, though I'm using a much lower resolution (1152x864).

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Thanks! That's all I really need to do with it but even scrolling through just the forum causes really bad stuttering. I even got a repeatable BSOD last night browsing through newegg. I also tried setting it as the only active display (though the other card is still installed.) I have a 7600GT that works perfectly but it's not standard PCI. is "GS" really just that bad?

It still shouldnt struggle with 2D. Onboards are slower than 8400GS, so.....not sure what the issue is, but Im guessing its from your mishmash of cards?

That is entirely possible and would be my biggest worry. I was hoping it wouldn't be a problem like that since the nvidia drivers page recommended the same video driver for all 3 cards. I'm gonna try pulling the PCI-E card tonight and disable the onboard and see if that makes any difference.

well my mother has a 7300GS in her rig and has none of those problems. i think it is the mix of video cards even with the same drivers. as noted in a different section, could apply here as well. the mix of cards even with same drivers causes some kind of slow down in the system. as the main use for the other section im talking about was for folding as two different model cards aka 9800GT and 9600GT. both would be slower at doing work when both were in at the same time then just one by itself. it is a odd relationship to that even with the same drivers. there could be something going on in the background even with the same drivers and two/three different cards in the rig.

Well I tried running just the single 8400GS w/onboard turned off and 250 removed and it still doesn't work worth a damn. I also swapped it for another 8400GS I borrowed from another system with the same result. The only thing I haven't tried is a format/reload but I just did that last week..

then do this, use driver sweeper or something along those lines. then reinstall the drivers, try using a newer one or even one after the first release with GTS250 support. sometimes you just have to try different drivers, which is the sad thing, you shouldnt have to though..

Evilsizer said:

then do this, use driver sweeper or something along those lines. then reinstall the drivers, try using a newer one or even one after the first release with GTS250 support. sometimes you just have to try different drivers, which is the sad thing, you shouldnt have to though..

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Thanks! I forgot the name of that program. Well I ran the driver uninstaller and then ran driver cleaner and reinstalled the drivers for the 8400 first with onboard disabled and 250 removed then added the onboard and then the 250, and reinstalled chipset drivers. It seems to help a LITTLE but still pretty bad. I'm gonna need to find a more powerful PCI card to test to make sure it's not the card.

ok since it is PCI, i was thinking pcie. in the bios there is a option, well in most, to assign IRQ to vga card. try doing that and see what happens... i really dunno what to tell ya, since you said pci. i used a pci ati2400 in a atom330 box and never had the issue your talking about.

have you checked NB temps etc, because with onboard, pcie and pci graphics i reckon traffic would be pretty high through there.

What i really don't get it is that 8400GS is the oldest card, still lurking in local stores.. The price is also ridiculous.

TheQuadFather said:

have you checked NB temps etc, because with onboard, pcie and pci graphics i reckon traffic would be pretty high through there.

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The NB is barely warm and has an 80mm fan on it. I did some testing and if I set a 3d app to specifically use the 8400GS it will play fine on that screen, the winamp visualization for example works fine once I tell it explicitly to use the card. However dragging windows around is still terrible. It seems that either Windows or the drivers aren't switching over the rendering correctly for the 8400. Moving between the 250 and 9300 works fine.