Graphic card on fire!

[elvinkun]

Greetings...

...So, let's say that suddenly, your NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT fries up. And let's say you are rather poor at the given moment. But you need a new GPU and fast. And also that you know practically nothing of GPUs. What cheap (preferably under 100€ cheap or even cheaper) GPU would you get...?

 

Actually, why am I typing like that... My GPU died, and I really need a new one, but know nothing about them and... Let's face it, there are hunderths of them. Got confsed. Need a cheap one tho. Could someone give me a helping hand here please?

 

Also, if it would be better than the NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT, it would be great.

 

...

 

Bad day, bad day...

Will be very gratefull for any response!

E.

[ChuckFinly]

Depends on what you are trying to do, whether or not you care if the card is used or new, and how fast you need it.

 

New ones are more expensive, usually come faster, and usually have warranties

 

Used ones are cheaper, usually do not come with warranties, are available virtually any time (especially if the card is not longer being made), and possibly come at a slower rate than new ones.

 

 

If you are playing Fallout or Skryim, you probably will not like a low-end card.

 

General specifications to look for:

 

make sure the card is a 256 bit interface (though that will tend to drive the price to your max), 128 bit is a little slower, and 64-bit is a don't-even-buy lol.

 

also make sure the memory type is GDDR3 or greater (such as GDDR4 or GDDR5)

 

make sure the memory (RAM) is at least 512MB, preferably 1 GB

 

 

If you are looking into a new card, you're probably talking somewhere between $50-$200 (US dollars)

 

 

Specific cards:

 

New:

Nvidia Geforce GTS 250 1st link 2nd link <$100

 

Nvidia Geforce GTX 260 $100-130

 

ATI Radeon HD 4870 1st link (currently out of stock) 2nd link (X2 version, means there are supposedly two GPU's) $130-$150

 

ATI Radeon HD 4850 $50 (after rebate)

 

 

Used(rather no longer in production):

 

Nvidia Geforce 9800 GT, GTX, or GTX+

 

Nvidia Geforce 9600 GT

 

Nvidia Geforce 8800 Ultra, GT, or GTX

 

ATI Radeon HD 3870

 

ATI Radeon HD 4870 (only used), 4890

 

The 3870 and 9600 GT are the least capable cards in this group

 

 

You asked for a list, but there are other factors to consider as well:

 

1. Power Supply,

 

2. and Motherboard space

 

3. why your current GPU fried. (it is possible it was just simply old, or there could be other factors)

 

#1 if your computer does not have enough power, it could damage not only the card, but the rest of your computer as well.

 

#2 make sure the card you do buy is small enough to fit in your case. If you motherboard or case is a MicroATX, you might have problems, they might cover the SATA ports for example.

 

#3 dependent on more information about your computer

 

 

I hope that helps. If you need more information, just ask. :smile:

Edited December 11, 2011 by ChuckFinly

[elvinkun]

Well, as to why it got fried... The fan obviously stopped working, then the whole cooling sort of... detached from it (with a small part of the GPU itself *cough* not quite sure how that happend tho, I keep everything clean, and had no accidents with punching the computer recently - sideffect of too much Skyrim?). Technicaly, it still works, more or less, except for it overheats and turns the computer off even before Win loads and I guess it could be repaired, but then again, it would prolly cost more than a new one.

 

Ok... now, here comes the questin that could make many people facepalm....

How do I find out what motherboard do I have?

That's somethink that isn't in dxdiag, so it's out of my reach, lol.And I lost the documentation a long, long time ago. Guess it would be rather awkward to get a GPU and find out it just doesn't fit in.

 

AMD Phenom 8650 Triple-Core Processor (3 CPUs), ~2.3GHz, memory 4GB, Nvidia Geforce 9500 GT (the burned one) ... is the rest.

Edited December 11, 2011 by elvinkun

[ChuckFinly]

There are a few ways...

 

If you have a brand PC, you can just simply look you model number. (For example, let's say I want to look the motherboard specifications for a Dell Optiplex 745. I would go to a search engine and type in "Dell Optiplex 745 motherboard specs" and search it. I am not sure about other brands, but Dell and HP [Hewlett Packard] make it very easy to tell what the motherboard specs are.)

 

You can open up your case and look around for a model number on the board itself.

 

Or if you do not have a brand PC, you could download a program such as PC Wizard 2010 (from softpedia; takes you to the download page and not directly download it). That particular program is made by the guys who did HW Monitor, which in my opinion, is one of the best temperature monitoring utilities.

 

Again, make sure your board can physically fit the card onto your board and into your case without doing anything. (For example, I have a buddy who couldn't put my video card in his comp because it blocked the SATA ports!).

 

I hope that is helpful.

 

Note: all the video cards I mentioned are at least a few years old; the oldest is from '06, the newest, an '09.

Edited December 11, 2011 by ChuckFinly

[danielcook]

It's cheap, it's 'newer', it has 448-bit memory pushing out over 100GP/sec...all for under $100 cdn 260 GTX Older shader&driectx but would out-preform your toasted 9500 4x~6x better ;)

 

 

Check this page. Shows the gfx-goodness of every nVidia card and ATI (eww! -.-)