Ever fry a video card?

[Gewehr98]

I just did - total bummer.  One minute, I'm watching TV via my ATI TV-Wonder tuner, and the next, all sorts of flashing pixel blocks, even during the POST display after reboot. Granted, the card wasn't anything spectacular, but it was all of about 10 months old, and let me play Brothers in Arms as well as my other 1st Person shoot-em ups.

An ATI Radeon 9600XT 256Mb - poof!

So now I've had to put my older jet engine of an ATI Fire GL4 back into the workstation, and start shopping for a new card.

I'm thinking about the Radeon HD3650 as a replacement, since this IBM is older with just an AGP Pro slot vs. PCI Express...

Maybe it's time I get serious about water cooling the beast, perhaps via a Koolance Exos system.   

[Gowen]

Got this from Fatwallet.com

Newegg has the HIS Radeon HD 4850 512MB available for $134.99 after MIR and it has free 3-day shipping. Checking the prices online this seems about $50 lower than most places.

Also includes a free HIS iClear accessory card w/ purchase, limited offer. Must be purchased with said card in this thread.

Here's the link

http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/872329

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161235&CMP=AFC-C8Junction

[Gewehr98]

Scanr, that's a nice price.

But it's also PCI-Express vs. the AGP I need, unless I missed something in the description.   

[Gowen]

Sorry, just did a search for Radeon.  I did not look at your specs.

[Mabs2]

So I'm not the only one here with an AGP system?
Good to know I'm not the only one MISERABLE.
:D

[Gewehr98]

I wouldn't write us off as miserable just yet, Mabs.  There are still AGP cards out there for DirectX 10, even, hence my looking at that Radeon HD 3650 for $92.00 from Patriot PC Outlet.

I want to try Fallout 3 and Bioshock, and although I have 4x Xeon 3.0 processors in my workstation, plus 2 Gb of memory, I still have a bit to catch up in with respect to video performance.  My recently-departed (overheated?) Radeon 9600XT was ok, but not really fantastic, as far as that went. 

My real goal is to sell off these 32-bit IBM workstations and move into the 64-bit realm, but that'll be a good chunk of change to do so.

[AZRedhawk44]

I'm not sure if the 3650 requires it, but the 3800 and higher cards definitely require an additional power connector from the power supply.  Even if it sucks power through the AGP slot, a 3650 will eat a lot more juice than a 9600.

I'm also a loyal ATI fanboy... My multimedia PC in the living room has a 9550 AGP in it and my gaming/toy PC has a pair of 3870's Crossfired and an ATI HDTV tuner card.

The crossfired PC has a 750 watt power supply in it, and when all the fans (LOTS of fans) in the case get going, it's loud.

You may need to up the juice on your PSU if it isn't about 500 watts or so for a 3650 and a quad CPU environment.

(BTW, Bioshock rocks on this PC... AMD 5000 x64 CPU, 8GB DDR2-800 RAM.  Haven't tried Fallout 3.)   

[RocketMan]

One needs to keep an eye on the cooling fans on the video cards.  These often go belly up without it being apparent.  Poof goes the video card...
There are aftermarket purveyors of video card coolers.  I've got a passive cooler on the X800XT card in this beast.  It works pretty well.

[Gewehr98]

I'm not too worried about the IBM 6850 power supply - it's a standard IBM workstation 500w unit, made to drive all the fans, hard drives, memory, and processors with plenty to spare.

Supposedly, the Radeon HD3650 is easier on power consumption than it appears:

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=545&type=expert

I'd wager the huge ATI Fire GL4 that came with the machine is a pig with respect to what it draws through the AGP bus, too. 

[edited: It is a pig.  It's an AGP Pro card, with the extra pinouts for the increased power draw, see the edge connector on the bottom right?]

[Gewehr98]

Looking at my deceased Radeon 9600XT, the first thing I noticed was that the big aluminum heatsink/spreader was contacting only the graphics chip, and even though it appeared to be cooling the video RAM, there was no contact whatsoever in that part of the card.

I went ahead and ordered the Asus version of the Radeon HD3650 with the silent passive cooling system.  I've got a big 120mm exhaust fan sitting right next to the AGP slot, and another one just in front of the card pulling cool air in, so I'm not too worried about it cooking - assuming the heatsinks on this model are actually in contact with the hot bits. 

[Firethorn]

So I'm not the only one here with an AGP system?

Posting from one right now... 

Of course, that's because it's my backup system - the primary went bellyup last week with the motherboard locking up at a memory initialization stage.  So a new motherboard and memory is on it's way, I figure the memory is OK, because I swapped out the DIMMs individually, and I don't see the memory just going bad like that.  Still, better safe than sorry.

Back when they released Bioshock I looked at the price difference between an AGP card that would run it and the PCI-X cards that would, the performance differences, etc...

Ended up buying a new computer.  LOVE my new lian-li case, 2 120MM fans, a 120MM in the PS, and silent as can be, with superior airflow compared to my old case that also has 120MM fans.

Of course, with the primary down I'm experiencing the joys of single-core operation again.  Basically 1 app can drag the whole computer down, which doesn't happen with my primary or the dual-core laptop.

So I go looking up dual core repalcements for my 939 motherboard - cheaper to replace the motherboard.  But that'd require replacing my memory...  On the other hand, if the memory for my primary is still good...  I can get a motherboard w/onboard video and a CPU for it for ~$80.  Oh- even better, they make a few still with AGP ports, so I can even reuse my videocard.

Then again, we are talking about my secondary computer- my backup.  There's a reason I built a new one.

Back on the card angle - normally memory doesn't need active cooling.

[taurusowner]

This whole thread is why I only play console games.

[Regolith]

My XFX nVidia 7900GS went belly up a couple of months ago.  It'd work for a while, and then after it got warm it'd fail and the system would crash.  That particular model was factory overclocked, and hence ran a bit hot, so I think the heat finally got to it.

After fighting with it and trying a few different things, I ordered a replacement (a PNY nVidia 9600GT) around Septemberish.  Had to send that one back because it was defective right out of the box.  So, after I get my refund for that one, I decided to order the MSI version of the same card, and it has run nicely ever since.  Even got a steep discount because it was open box.   


I did consider one of Asus's cards with the passive cooling system, but a lot of the reviewers said it ran a little too hot, and having already lost one card to heat I decided to not take a chance with it.

[slugcatcher]

I feel your pain. My 9800AIW died on me a few months ago. I'm not upgrading my whole system for pci express either.

[Thor]

I've been in the market for a new AGP video card. I'm running an old GeForce MX2-400 with only 64 Meg of VRAM. I have an ATI Radeon card wirh 128 meg of VRAM, but it always installs itself twice and crashes after POST. MT current graphics card does what I need, but it would be nice to get something better. I don't game, so I don't need a lot.

[Marnoot]

My XFX nVidia 7900GS went belly up a couple of months ago.  It'd work for a while, and then after it got warm it'd fail and the system would crash.  That particular model was factory overclocked, and hence ran a bit hot, so I think the heat finally got to it.

After fighting with it and trying a few different things, I ordered a replacement (a PNY nVidia 9600GT) around Septemberish.  Had to send that one back because it was defective right out of the box.  So, after I get my refund for that one, I decided to order the MSI version of the same card, and it has run nicely ever since.  Even got a steep discount because it was open box.   


I did consider one of Asus's cards with the passive cooling system, but a lot of the reviewers said it ran a little too hot, and having already lost one card to heat I decided to not take a chance with it.

The whole 7900 line from nVidia had major problems. My 7900GT just went belly-up, and apparently it's a pretty pandemic issue with that chip line. Just replaced it with an ATI HD4850 512MB.

[Gewehr98]

I was looking at similar Nvidia offerings, too.

I'll have to do an informal poll sometime, and see what the mortality rate is for a given video card category.  Maybe they die at a quicker rate than I originally thought?  That, or we geeks on APS are really running our respective systems through the wringer...

I am somewhat confused about the video RAM bit.  Some places I surf say that the more memory a video card has onboard, the harder it hits the system management-wise.  That would appear to negate any improvement in video offered by the larger video memory, wouldn't it? I ordered the 512Mb Asus card pictured above, and can certainly add more memory to my IBM until it hits the 3gb/4gb limit imposed by 32-bit WinXP Pro. 

Weird. 

[Regolith]

I was looking at similar Nvidia offerings, too.

I'll have to do an informal poll sometime, and see what the mortality rate is for a given video card category.  Maybe they die at a quicker rate than I originally thought?  That, or we geeks on APS are really running our respective systems through the wringer...

Good question.  I've had two cards fail on me in the last couple of years and need to be replaced, but its very possible the first one that died was due to the cheap PSU frying the motherboard.

On the other hand, one my computers (a non-gaming rig set up primarily just to run DVDs) is running a relatively ancient nVidia Ti4200 that's been trucking along since 2002 or 2003.  That one dates back to my very first system build. 

I am somewhat confused about the video RAM bit.  Some places I surf say that the more memory a video card has onboard, the harder it hits the system management-wise.  That would appear to negate any improvement in video offered by the larger video memory, wouldn't it? I ordered the 512Mb Asus card pictured above, and can certainly add more memory to my IBM until it hits the 3gb/4gb limit imposed by 32-bit WinXP Pro. 

Weird. 

I've never heard that before, but then I haven't done a whole hell of a lot of research lately.  I know having more onboard memory for the GPU seems to drastically improve 3D animation rendering speeds, though, and my system does seem to be running faster for the extra 256 MB my new card has over the older one.

[Marvin Dao]

I am somewhat confused about the video RAM bit.  Some places I surf say that the more memory a video card has onboard, the harder it hits the system management-wise.  That would appear to negate any improvement in video offered by the larger video memory, wouldn't it? I ordered the 512Mb Asus card pictured above, and can certainly add more memory to my IBM until it hits the 3gb/4gb limit imposed by 32-bit WinXP Pro. 

Weird.

It's pretty simple. A 32-bit processor can only address a total of 4 GB of RAM. That 4 GB includes both system memory and video card memory. WinXP SP3 has a hard coded limit on system RAM at ~ 3.2 GB of RAM, so you're not affected by this unless your video card(s) have more than ~ 800 MB of RAM.

It is a concern for people with the latest and greatest in lunatic setups though. The AMD 4870 X2 has 2 GB of memory. Drop one of those into a 32-bit system and the system would only be able to utilize 2 GB of system RAM no matter how much was installed. This isn't a good thing if you run memory hungry applications. It's not a big deal for a gaming rig since few games can utilize over 2 GB.

There's also the option of running two of those suckers in parallel in a computer. Do that and there's 4 GB for video RAM and none left for system RAM, which would render that setup unusable with a 32-bit OS.

[KPT]

The whole 7900 line from nVidia had major problems. My 7900GT just went belly-up, and apparently it's a pretty pandemic issue with that chip line. Just replaced it with an ATI HD4850 512MB.

I've never heard that. I have a 7950 GT that worked fine for two years or so before I upgraded to an 8800 GTS.

On the other hand I've never had any luck with ATI cards.

[Mabs2]

I'm getting disk read errors.  Again.
If this HD is failing (SMART scans say my HD is in mint condition, just like the last one) then it's the third HD failure this year.  Two of them brand new.

I don't get it.
I can barely afford to pay for my CCW class, and I dunno where the money for a hand gun is going to come from...and on top of that I have to think about building a new computer.  And then suddenly all my hard drives go bad? =\

[Calumus]

Mabs, If you've killed 2 new hard drives this year it may be something besides luck. How old is the PC? It wouldn't be a Dell 420 or 4600 series would it? A dying power supply can do funky things to a system, and can limp along for quite some time before finally dying. Disk errors are one of the things I've seen. I ask about the Dell because apparently they seem to have gotten a bad batch of power supplys at some point, and they sold a ton of those systems. I've replaced about 2 dozen of then since last April. If you have a known good PS you can borrow for a bit, I'd give it a shot and see if you keep getting errors. If that ends up being the problem, you'll want to replace it asap. When a PS goes, it can go violently and take a mobo and ram with it. Cheers,
Shawn

[Firethorn]

MT current graphics card does what I need, but it would be nice to get something better. I don't game, so I don't need a lot.

It does what you need - but what, specifically, would you want it to do better, how isn't it satisfying your needs other than not being new?  From what you said I'd stick with your current card.

If this HD is failing (SMART scans say my HD is in mint condition, just like the last one) then it's the third HD failure this year.  Two of them brand new.

A lot of systems chuck the smart scan stuff, or don't do it properly.  How's the system stored?  Cool or Hot?  High humidity or Low(40-60% generally fine, as long as it's not condensing).  Are you avoiding shocks/bumps to the system?  Does the HD have good airflow?

I'll have to do an informal poll sometime, and see what the mortality rate is for a given video card category.  Maybe they die at a quicker rate than I originally thought?  That, or we geeks on APS are really running our respective systems through the wringer...

In my case, the video card is just fine - looks like it was the motherboard that failed.  Preliminary results, 'new' system up and running with everything old except the MB and memory.  I'll have to test the memory later.  On the other hand, I'm currently at a 5% overclock and doing just fine.

Oh and what Marvin said as for 32 bit systems and memory cards.  32 bits can only address 4GB, kinda like how 16 bit systems could really only address 64k - why paging was such a big deal for the early processors.  It includes ALL memory - including some things like BIOS.  It'll be a while before we reach the 64 bit limits.  I also figure that Vista will be Microsoft's last major 32 bit OS.  You can now get 4GB for under $50, all major CPUs are now 64 bit, programs should be adjusting.  If nothing else, a dual/quad core should be able to sandbox any non-compliant programs without any major performance hits.