Joined on 04/12/10
runs like a dream at 1333.
Pros: Fast. Low voltage (1.5v 1333 is hard to find now). Large heat spreader which can be removed. Scores high in Windows Experience Index (which is actually a great tool to find bottlenecks). Overclocks to ~1440 without a hitch. Heat spreaders are still small enough to fit side-by-side. Great price point. Bragging rights.
Cons: CAS 9 is a little slow, but it wasn't falsely advertised or anything so no eggs off. Heat spreaders just might get in the way of a CPU cooler (I had to turn my thermaltake spinQ around to make room).
Overall Review: Some quick advice: Take 10 seconds to examine your case and make sure they will fit. If you are OCing them, bump up the voltage to 1.6. they are a great deal, but there's no point in buying 2 unless you are building a workstation or something - 8gb is more than enough. If you can no longer stably OC your CPU after installing them, check your BIOS. I couldn't OC my CPU at all, turns out my BIOS incorrectly set the timings to 7. set them manually, then set the clock speed manually, and you're good to go. I am now running an increase of 1ghz without a problem. Don't take off the heat spreaders unless you are installing something better.
Crashes under Win7
Pros: Low profile. Comes with mounting brackets for DVI and VGA. Packaged well.
Cons: Bought this card to power 2 external monitors (1 DVI, 1 VGA). It mounted in the PC just fine and I installed the drivers from nVIDIA's website. My primary monitor is attached to a Radeon HD 5570. After some bootup problems I found out I had to tell the BIOS to initialize the PCIe video card first, after that I was able to boot win7 normally. When the two external monitors were set up I was able to move the cursor across all 3. However, upon dragging a window to one of them, the computer would freeze, I would lose the image on the 2 external monitors, after about 30 seconds the main monitor (on the 5570) would go blank as well, and the computer would reboot. SOMETIMES I might be able to have a window open on the 8400GS for a few minutes before crashing. I tried *everything* - different drivers, disconnected one monitor then the other, even moved the card to a different PCI slot. Nothing worked. I'm not sure if this is a Windows 7 problem, a heat problem, or just a bad card.
Overall Review: The box claimed it could run Windows 7/vista features "smoothly and seamlessly" which obviously didn't happen. I was not willing to get rid of my 5570 so I didn't bother taking out the 5570 and using the 8400GS by itself. Now running 2 monitors on the 5570 without a problem, game framerates are not affected and I'm thinking of buying a displayport monitor for Eyefinity. All I really need the 2nd and 3rd monitors for is to spread out when I'm video editing. Right now I'm getting ready to ship it off for an RMA (I've been lucky and never had to RMA before so this is my first time).
Solid card that unlocks
Pros: Fast, unlocks shaders (wouldn't recommend straight bios flash though) Lots of stuff in the box!
Cons: No voltage control, only does 40mhz above stock. The TriXX utility is pretty much useless without the voltage control.
Overall Review: Unlock it, give it a mild overclock if you want, and don't expect much more. Not to say this is a bad card, but for a brand name I would expect some features like volt modding. I was a bit letdown to find out this specific is NOT on the list of volt mod support on their website.
Great little proc.
Pros: Cool Fast Unlockable (for me) to a 4-core stable @ 3.7 1.4v - scores 47.5 Gflops in Intel burn test at above speeds.
Cons: Couldn't hit 4ghz, even tried 1.488 vcore still no joy. Oh well. Unlocking to quad increased my temps on an H50 from 35 load to 50 load. Stock cooler will not unlock this, nuff said.
Overall Review: What AMD says about voltages is true on the details page. Above 1.4v the mhz gain is microscopic, below 1.4 you still will get quite a gain. I've heard some 500 series procs hitting 4.1+ so I was a bit dissapointed unable to get above 3.7 as a 4-core. Still stressing as a dual core, but not expecting above 3.8 as a dual. I'd much rather get an unlock than a high OC. Didn't increase my frame rates with a Radeon HD5570 upgrading from an Athlon. The 5570 is a slow card but I was thinking I might get a little boost. 6950 on the way to get rid of this bottleneck.