Need new video card for PC

[BrianG]

I suppose not, but the reduced framerate is quite noticeable when I play Need for Speed - HP2 (one of my favs). It'll do until the new card comes in. And that 4400 is huge! I forgot how it's as long as the mobo is wide!

[Pliska]

Hey Brian, I havent Looking into building pc's much so I cant really comment on the Videocard, although www.computerforum.com, has tons of info and im sure someone there can find a goodcard for you. Just a thought.

[BP-Revo]

Originally Posted by BrianG

I suppose not, but the reduced framerate is quite noticeable when I play Need for Speed - HP2 (one of my favs). It'll do until the new card comes in. And that 4400 is huge! I forgot how it's as long as the mobo is wide!

You should see my 8800...sometimes I swear I have a second mobo as my vid card...

[BrianG]

@Pliska: I used to be a lot more heavily into building PCs and hardware, but this BL stuff kinda took over. One of my favorite forums was amdforums.com, but haven't posted in a couple years. I just figured there would be enough talent here to help me out. But I'm gonna bookmark that site for future reference.

@BP-Revo: Yeah, with the memory capacity, clock speeds, power requirements, and physical size of some of the faster ones, it might as well be another mobo! I swear it won't be long until dual PS's are needed; one for the GPU, the other for everything else.

[Arct1k]

http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/01/...p_card_for_115

You chose the right card :)

[BrianG]

That's good to hear. Unless things have changed since that article was written, it looks like I'll have to use Omega drivers instead of ATI's, but no biggie...

[MTBikerTim]

Originally Posted by BrianG

That's one of the cards I was looking at. $115 is perfect and should be a definite improvement over the old 9800. It's been a while since I've been into knowing all the brands out there, but I remember Sapphire. I'll just need to also get a PCIe power adaptor cable... then again maybe not, I'll have to re-check my PS.

And I'm using an Antec TruePower 550w PS, so that shouldn't be a problem. But, just for giggles, I hooked up my fluke meter to the rails, set it to record min/max voltages, and ran the PC for a while. All the rails stayed to within about 5% of their rated values under load.

@BP-Revo: I've used cards from both chipsets and they both worked well for me. When I bought the ATI, it had the best picture quality at the expense of a few fps, so I got that. Before that card, I had a GeForce4 Ti 4400 (currently using), GeForce2 gts (still have and works, but doesn't have DVI), and an old ATI All-in-wonder Pro (back in the Pentium 266 days, so it's long gone now).

@phidailo: No, I don't intend on spending much. I will be getting a new one fairly soon, but it'll still be a while and I simply can't live with a GF4 card.

@Squee: Thanks, but I already ordered the Sapphire 2600xt. $115 plus $3 for the PCIe adaptor cable is pretty good I think.

I still haven't bought a multi meter. After all these years of needing one. I haven't bought one cause I have been waiting to have the cash to buy the fluke for the exact thing you just used it for. The other meters don't have the sampling rate to detect the min and maxes accurately.

[BrianG]

Yeah, I really like my Fluke. It's an older model (about 7 years old) but still works great. I've used the min/max/average function a number of times and really like it. Just have to make sure that whatever you are monitoring changes will register on the meter because of the sampling rate (I don't know what it is). The true-RMS feature is neat too. It allows you to measure true RMS voltages of AC signals of a much wider frequency range and wave shape. Other meters assume the AC voltage you are measuring is typical household AC and lose accuracy when measuring anything other than 60Hz sine-waves.

Best part is that I got it for free! The place I used to work had it and one day the display kept flashing on and off. They thought it was broken so they were going to throw it away. I asked if I could have it and all it needed was a new battery! I did the honest thing and told them that the next day, but they already had went out and bought another meter, so I got to keep it! Yay!

I'd really like to get an oscilloscope of my own someday, but it has to be at least dual trace with digital storage and high frequency, and those are pricey.

[BrianG]

The new vid card came in yesterday (yay)! Had to install Omega drivers since ATI drivers don't work when using the 2600xt and AGP.

My old Radeon 9800pro had large heatsinks, noisy fans, was rather large (took two slots), and cost about 400. The new one uses one slot, heatsink/fan is much smaller, is easily 2X-3X faster than the old one (judging by game play at high res and AA and AF turned on), the GPU/mem heat up less, has an HDTV output, and was about 4x less money. I'm very happy with this! Thanks to all for your recommendations!

[Arct1k]

Brian do you play bf2 at all?

[BrianG]

No, not much of a fps type of guy. I like driving games mostly.

[BrianG]

ARGG! I've had it with this stupid ATI 2600XT! The AGP version is hardly supported (it's all about PCIe now). Sure, I can get drivers that technically work, but nothing near the performance of the old ATI 9800 pro.

This computer is getting OOOOOLLLLLDDDD, so it is close to retirement anyway. But, might make a good kids PC since they don't play the graphics-heavy games. But, it should play the older games fine, so I'm in the market (once again) for a used ATI 9800 Pro that someone may have collecting dust in their basement. Let me know if you come across one cheap.

[bdebde]

I think I have a 9600pro. My old machine is running x800xt now (whoo hoo).

[BrianG]

Update to revive a dead thread:

Well, this "new" card is crapping out on me. Man, I am not liking ATI stuff.

The last few weeks, it's been doing this odd thing where the monitor acts like it is in sleep mode on a fresh boot. I have to put the PC to sleep, then rewake it for the monitor to come on. I borrowed the video card from my server box and it's definitely the card. Then last night, it went completely dead in the middle of surfing. I found a puffed cap so I replaced it with one I happened to have on hand, and the card works now, but is still doing the sleep thing. So, there's other stuff wrong with it.

This HD2600 has been a hassle from the start with its poor driver support. It's actually a PCIe card with an AGP bridge chip, so normal drivers don't work so well (and I've tried them all - even the hotfixes).

I am getting a new PC from the inlaws soon; they got it ~1 year ago, got a virus a couple times, got tired of that, so they just got a Mac. But until then, this is a PITA. Anyone still have any kind of AGP card in their junk boxes? I used to have a couple old spares to use, but they got wrecked in the flood last summer. At this point, anything that's AGP 4x/8x compatible will work, but don't want to spend a lot for something the kids will be inheriting soon.

[bdebde]

I will have to take a look and see if I have anything AGP left anymore.