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I recently purchased a Lenovo TS140 ThinkServer. Despite its branding as a server I plan to use it as a desktop. As part of the setup, I want to use a GeForce 9500 GT graphics card. The card is PCI-based, and while it should be good for my purposes, I am unable to achieve a decent framerate with it. To resolve the issue, I have tried changing the power settings (I am running Windows 10 Pro x64) to Performance Mode and updating the drivers. When neither of these worked, I tried changing the refresh rate in the NVIDIA Control Panel from the default setting of 85Hz to 60Hz, but for whatever reason, the change does not apply.
I am not trying to play any graphically intense games on the machine, but even things like watching videos on YouTube and the Cortana circle animation are horribly lagging.
What can I do to resolve the issue? The installation of Windows 10 is a fresh one, and I haven't installed anything else on it yet.
DaveTheMinion
Posted 2016-09-10T20:15:47.353
Reputation: 4 578
1The GPU in question is extremely old. Its 12 years old. You also don't indicate, framerate in what application, be specific. You don't mention what quality of video your attempting to play. How much system memory do you have? What CPU do you have? How much VRAM does your card have? HTML5 or Java video? What browser are you using? – Ramhound – 2016-09-10T21:07:20.770
This is a better chatroom question by the way. – Ramhound – 2016-09-10T21:21:50.220
1PCI. For graphics efficiency that's like sucking a golf ball through a hose-pipe. You probably have 2-16mb of graphics ram? Stop this pain and spend some money. – JohnnyVegas – 2016-09-10T21:23:04.557
@Ramhound The computer's processor, as listed in the Task Manager, is a Xeon E3-1246 v3. The computer has 24GB of DDR3 memory. I was trying to view the video using YouTube's HTML5 player in Internet Explorer at 1080p. The card has 1GB of VRAM. As for the application that I am using, it is irrelevant because it is a problem with everything that I've tried so far. – DaveTheMinion – 2016-09-10T21:23:08.443
PCI simply does not have the throughput. Although you could try resetting the BIOS. – JohnnyVegas – 2016-09-10T21:24:41.077
@JohnnyVegas How would resetting the BIOS help? – DaveTheMinion – 2016-09-10T21:25:06.190
The Plug&Play settings may be clashing with another device - If you have the option to reset the P&P data (may be renamed to something similar) try that. PCI uses the old IRQ stuff. – JohnnyVegas – 2016-09-10T21:26:04.957
@DavidB - It wouldn't. I would agree that this simply is a throughput problem with PCI. You have more then enough memory for HD video. So its either the lack of VRAM that is causing your problems or the simply fact there isn't enough bandwidth. – Ramhound – 2016-09-10T21:26:54.660
This server has DisplayPort built in? The internal graphics system is far better than any PCI based video card, no matter how much ram it has. – JohnnyVegas – 2016-09-10T21:30:34.693
@JohnnyVegas Yes, it has two DisplayPorts built in. Using the graphics card, I split the screen between two monitors. I need to use VGA. Could I use a DisplayPort to VGA converter? I have one of those. If I look in to using a dedicated card, which ultimately I want to do, could I get a card like the GTX 770? It still uses PCI, so would I still have a problem? – DaveTheMinion – 2016-09-10T21:36:47.510
I wasn't aware a GTX 770 PCI existed. But if it does, it probably still isn't much better than what you have, because the PCI bus is so slow compared to PCIe or even AGP. You're much better off using the integrated graphics processor built into the CPU die and using a converter (active or passive, whichever you end up needing) to convert between the video header format (DisplayPort) and whatever your monitor needs. And yes, of course DisplayPort to VGA is possible. – allquixotic – 2016-09-10T23:41:01.983
If you decide you want a discrete graphics card, you will be wasting your time unless it's a PCI Express graphics card. – allquixotic – 2016-09-10T23:41:33.780
@allquicatic Sorry. I don't know my different PCI-like slots very well. It is PCI Express. I'm probably going to go for the GTX 950, so I haven't looked at the 770 to see if I was wrong. – DaveTheMinion – 2016-09-10T23:55:12.670
Use the displayport to vga adapter - The inbuilt graphics is far better than the card you are currently using. – JohnnyVegas – 2016-09-11T09:48:57.133
@JohnnyVegas I actually did try it and it doesn't look too good. I am not certain of this, but that may be because the Xeon does not have an integrated card. – DaveTheMinion – 2016-09-11T15:59:06.767
It does have integrated graphics as the spec on the lenovo website. – JohnnyVegas – 2016-09-11T19:17:23.853
@JohnnyVegas Huh, you're right! Well, either way, I still am considering getting a higher end card. Have to see if it's worth it for my purposes though., – DaveTheMinion – 2016-09-11T19:20:23.667