Good Video Card?
<div class="IPBDescription">Nvidia Geforce4 ti4200</div> Im looking to buy a new video card of the same type I have. My current one is made by Palit and is a GeForce 4, Ti4200 128 meg AGP 8x card.
However im fed up with Palit. 5-6 months after buying my video card from them it went 'bad' and my screen showed distortions and such. I contacted them and got a new card. Now this new card (abuot 3 months later) has decided to do about the same thing.
Enoughs enough, I have no plans to spend 30 bucks on shipping every 4 months to get the card replaced. So...does anyone have any experience with video cards? What company makes reliable ones?
Im not interested in overclocking or anything like that, but I do need something that can keep itself cool. I initially thought my problem was heat but im not sure sure anymore because a heat problem wouldn't just 'happen' one day.
However im fed up with Palit. 5-6 months after buying my video card from them it went 'bad' and my screen showed distortions and such. I contacted them and got a new card. Now this new card (abuot 3 months later) has decided to do about the same thing.
Enoughs enough, I have no plans to spend 30 bucks on shipping every 4 months to get the card replaced. So...does anyone have any experience with video cards? What company makes reliable ones?
Im not interested in overclocking or anything like that, but I do need something that can keep itself cool. I initially thought my problem was heat but im not sure sure anymore because a heat problem wouldn't just 'happen' one day.
Comments
Sounds more like a cooling problem to me.
Not into overclocking or anything, so I couldn't tell you how hot the thing runs, or whether it's uber hardware. Runs every game I throw at it smoothly. Run NS at 1024x768 as smooth as 320x128. I imagine it could go up to 1600x1200 without a problem.
$30 for shipping?? Dunno where you're shopping but check out Newegg. Best reseller online you'll find anywhere.
<a href='http://www.newegg.com/' target='_blank'>http://www.newegg.com/</a>
also, check out tom's hardware for reviews. Most comprehensive review site out there, to my knowledge.
Mind you, my Asus Ti4600 does me just fine <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
PS. All of the Radeon cards seem to run MUCH cooler their than nVidia counterparts, so perhaps an ATI solution would be more suited to your situation.
Gotta love the "dependable" driver support you get from radeon not to mention the issues their cards have with every new game that comes out.
My GeForce 2 I had (which I think was MSI) ran fine and still does run fine, ive sense upgraded. While having it my computer would erstart but I found out that was my old computer, not the card (which I initially thought it was).
Maybe ill buy an MSI geforce.
As for radeon...I prefer not to go that route. Some of the games I play and radeon do not mix real well.
The built-In win xp drivers blow, always go wit the newest driver from teh official website
Because it can slowly damage the card.
Oh, and like someone said: www.newegg.com BINGO
I built my computer from scratch, and everything monitor speakers keyboard mouse etc etc. all together, I spent about 1600$ for what was at the time one of the most high end machines possible on consumer available parts. I also enjoy my 19" viewsonic monitor, yes I do. When i was doing it, I compared prices... to build what I had at alienware would've cost 3000. To do it at dell, 2780$ ( and that is with dell parts which I simply don't want when I can have the real parts!). Putting it together from the local PC megastores? Couldn't. They didn't even have the latest video cards when I got mine. But judging by their prices... 3500-4000$. And I still would have had to put it together myself. That 1600$ was with shipping, too, so they come highly recommended from me.
3 months... that sounds like it could be a hard disk fragment, or scandisk problem... u should do those at least every week to keep comp in working order
Not every problem is related to the vid card u know.... <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
And no, of course not every problem is related to the video card.
[Edit]
Quickest and easiest way to narrow down whether the problem is video card related or not, is to simply test it in another machine using the latest Det drivers. If it works fine in another persons machine, its either going to be some sort of software corruption/conflict issue, or a compatibility problem with another piece of hardware in your machine.
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Heat is a likly problem since the computer sat under a desk in a corner of my room with low airflow. Im not sure what else I can do heat wise short of leaving my computer open with a desk fan blowing into it.
My CPU fan is to large to allow a case fan to fit. The computer is not really crowded, in fact when my first card went poof I got a new case that was bigger. It has only the video card slotted. The CPU is about 3-4 inches away from the video card. Then the power supply is about 1 and a half to 2 inches above my CPU. The harddrives and other disk drivers/CDrom/etc are about 1-2 inches from all of the above.
So...can heat slowly damage card over 3-4 months with no visual effect until one day POOF, you got artifacts all over the screen?
[Edit]
Often, simply removing the case can lower your ambient case temp quite a bit. I suggest doing this and monitoring the temperature difference by using a hardware temp monitoring program such as motherboard monitor. Most systemboards are shipped with this sort of software these days, so if your board is recent just look on the sw cd that came with it.
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Or if you have a dead card (or even just a throwaway from a dumpster) you can ship that back if ordering direct from ATI to get about $50 off the standard retail price.
And I'd suggest looking somewhere besides Tom's (*coughselloutcough*) Hardware for your benchmarking needs.
the puny little fan they gave the card got some dust inside of the motor and it would spin too slow, causing all sorts of wierd stuff to happen. to fix it, i just replaced it with a nice cpu fan and every thing works fine now
btw, my card run for a good 2 months before any thing happed.