The Nvidia GeForce 9800GTX+, is it still useful in 2019?

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

This will be a look back at the GeForce 9800GTX+. i bought one for my collection of gpu's, and discovered it's in perfect working order. so, i decided to test what it could do in 2019, considering i bought it for less than €10. 

 

Looks

The card looks dated, but it still looks good IMO. i especially like the graphic on it, i wish GPU manufacturers still did this. 

 

 

Drivers

The nightmare of everyone who uses old hardware, drivers. i first tried it on Windows. i DDU'd the newer drivers, rebooted and installed the driver the nvidia website gave me (342). that failed bigtime. while installing the driver my pc locked up and the screen went black. this happend twice and then i gave up. 

 

Happily i also have Pop_OS on my pc. i booted into that, and removed my existing nvidia drivers with one command (sudo apt remove nvidia-*) and then i installed the 340 drivers, rebooted and i was greeted with my OS in glorious 1080p. however, it locked up twice while i was testing things and after the second one i was left with a black screen upon bootup. i swapped my GTX 690 back in my pc and then it was fine, so the drivers are unstable to say the least. 

 

 

Tests

i tested Minecraft, CS:GO and Dota 2 on Pop_OS. i used the 9800GTX+ in my main pc which has: Phenom X4 955 @ stock, 16GB of ram and a 1TB ssd. 

 

Minecraft ran surprisingly well. with everything on low, particles set to decreased and 6 chunks, at 720p i was able to get a consistent 60fps, except when i was flying around, then it dipped to the mid 50's. 

 

CS:GO did not launch. 

 

Dota 2 did launch, and at 1080p with everything on low it hovered around the 40fps mark i assume (couldn't monitor it), but i had massive screen tearing. enabling vsync helped with that, but it locked the framerate to 30 (again assuming, but it looked like 30). 

 

 

Conclusion

The 9800GTX+ is simply too old to be useful, mainly because of the driver hell and considering the low prices of better cards than it.

 

i am still happy to own it, and it will go nicely in my collection, but other than retro gaming builds, the 9800GTX+ is ready for retirement in 2019. 

[kelvinhall05]

Good display piece, old GPUs look great

[Crunchy Dragon]

23 minutes ago, Twilight said:

mainly because of the driver hell

That doesn't surprise me too much. Does it even have driver support on Windows 10? That would actually surprise me.

 

Also, random fun fact:

I, too, like to take pictures of GPUs on my Corsair mousemat.

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

Just now, Crunchy Dragon said:

That doesn't surprise me too much. Does it even have driver support on Windows 10? That would actually surprise me.

it does, according to the nvidia website at least. it gave me a driver. it didn't work so there's that, but it did give me a driver. 

[Nena Trinity]

You can use it for csgo!

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

5 minutes ago, Nena360 said:

You can use it for csgo!

it didn't launch. so no, i can't. 

[Nena Trinity]

Just now, Twilight said:

it didn't launch. so no, i can't. 

You might need Windows 7 since Windows 10 needs DX11 compatible cards...

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

1 minute ago, Nena360 said:

You might need Windows 7 since Windows 10 needs DX11 compatible cards...

i was using linux. did you read the post?

[Nena Trinity]

Just now, Twilight said:

i was using linux. did you read the post?

Ok if Ubuntu just go to the settings and make sure its proprietary driver and not the open-sauce one...

[SolarNova]

I used to run 2x 8800GTX's in SLi for playing Crysis 1 , I would have thought that for older games a single card would still be usable. Though i suppose its all down to drivers now.

 

Later, when i upgraded my GPU i went to a single 560ti with a single 8800GTX as a physX card. worked well for the time.