Son Goku
04-13-03, 11:17 PM
First off, and before 1 of the mods move this to the nVidia gfx card forum, I'd like to preface this by saying I specifically did not post there, because if replacing my gfx card is the only option, I do not want to limit myself to consideration of any one companies card. It is the card that is important from a user's stand point, and not the name put on it, when it comes to purchasing considerations IMO. I'm actually not sure what I should or would want to do at this moment.
OK, too add some woes of late, my GeForce 3 Ti500 just died tonight. Was doing something else, looked back and my screen was black, and the monitor's power light was orange.
So I reboot and there is these somewhat frequent (about 1/2 inch apart) dots going across both directions of the screen in a regular pattern. The text for the BIOS screen is shimmering and there are some splotches of color shimmering a bit on the screen also. Also Windows XP would only boot into safe mode, because in regular mode...I guess the drivers don't like the gfx card problem as it just black screens while the monitor light turns orange (suggesting the card stops syncing with it then). Oh no, this doesn't look good.
I tried taking the video loop back (from my DVD decoder out) and hooking the monitor directly to the gfx card, and no dice. I turned off, un-plugged and used some canned air to blow out around (also tried running with case open) and no dice.
So, in that I have a Asus A7N266-E, I tried pulling the AGP card, plugging the monitor directly into the on-board gfx port, and everything loads fine now without the gfx anomolies. A GeForce2 GTS is a bit of a downgrade, and also eats up some system RAM (the integrated gfx) and I'm not all that thrilled about the downgrade now, but my GF3's well... Also, I noticed that the very center of the fan, the label is slightly browned. BTW, this is a Visiontek GF3 Ti500, though I'd have to see if I have the original packaging or not. I seriously doubt I have the receipt anymore from when I bought it from Best Buy in November 2001. The card has not been over-clocked.
- Is there a means to get a replacement or am I SOL, I don't remember exactly, but think Visiontek might have had a lifetime warranty to the original purchaser. Not sure about the original packaging, I'd have to look, but the only thing is the receipt I'm sure I don't have.
- Or will I need to replace this? Right at this moment, I don't exactly have $400 or so. Wasn't a good time for this to die on me.
- If I need to replace this, that leaves both nVidia and ATI these days, and their respective product offerings...the pros, the cons, etc
Admittedly, I had only casually followed the 8500 vs the GF4, as with a GF3 Ti500 I wasn't looking to buy either...only followed some reviews to stay somewhat current, etc.
I was also initially waiting for the GF FX, but now seeing what has or hasn't manifested, somewhat decided to wait for the following product generation from either nVidia or ATI and see what manifests, and have since well bought some other things I needed...so no $400 left right now.
But now, and at 1.5 years somewhat unexpectedly, my current card (outside the integrated downgrade for me) has gone to the crapper.
- BTW, though I do have 512 MB RAM, the loss of system memory to the integrated gfx isn't that great either. One of the reasons is that one of the classes I'm taking this semester is in Oracle dBase administration.
As such, I have Oracle 9i Release 2 Enterprise Edition loaded on my computer, and though I disable the services when I'm not using it for school work and stuff (yes it is that much of a memory hog), the loss of 64 MB will cause some serious swapping no doubt with that running. I could perhaps go to tweak memory usage with Oracle, but ugh... This is yes under winXP also...I really could use the memory back, as well as the better gfx back...
OK, too add some woes of late, my GeForce 3 Ti500 just died tonight. Was doing something else, looked back and my screen was black, and the monitor's power light was orange.
So I reboot and there is these somewhat frequent (about 1/2 inch apart) dots going across both directions of the screen in a regular pattern. The text for the BIOS screen is shimmering and there are some splotches of color shimmering a bit on the screen also. Also Windows XP would only boot into safe mode, because in regular mode...I guess the drivers don't like the gfx card problem as it just black screens while the monitor light turns orange (suggesting the card stops syncing with it then). Oh no, this doesn't look good.
I tried taking the video loop back (from my DVD decoder out) and hooking the monitor directly to the gfx card, and no dice. I turned off, un-plugged and used some canned air to blow out around (also tried running with case open) and no dice.
So, in that I have a Asus A7N266-E, I tried pulling the AGP card, plugging the monitor directly into the on-board gfx port, and everything loads fine now without the gfx anomolies. A GeForce2 GTS is a bit of a downgrade, and also eats up some system RAM (the integrated gfx) and I'm not all that thrilled about the downgrade now, but my GF3's well... Also, I noticed that the very center of the fan, the label is slightly browned. BTW, this is a Visiontek GF3 Ti500, though I'd have to see if I have the original packaging or not. I seriously doubt I have the receipt anymore from when I bought it from Best Buy in November 2001. The card has not been over-clocked.
- Is there a means to get a replacement or am I SOL, I don't remember exactly, but think Visiontek might have had a lifetime warranty to the original purchaser. Not sure about the original packaging, I'd have to look, but the only thing is the receipt I'm sure I don't have.
- Or will I need to replace this? Right at this moment, I don't exactly have $400 or so. Wasn't a good time for this to die on me.
- If I need to replace this, that leaves both nVidia and ATI these days, and their respective product offerings...the pros, the cons, etc
Admittedly, I had only casually followed the 8500 vs the GF4, as with a GF3 Ti500 I wasn't looking to buy either...only followed some reviews to stay somewhat current, etc.
I was also initially waiting for the GF FX, but now seeing what has or hasn't manifested, somewhat decided to wait for the following product generation from either nVidia or ATI and see what manifests, and have since well bought some other things I needed...so no $400 left right now.
But now, and at 1.5 years somewhat unexpectedly, my current card (outside the integrated downgrade for me) has gone to the crapper.
- BTW, though I do have 512 MB RAM, the loss of system memory to the integrated gfx isn't that great either. One of the reasons is that one of the classes I'm taking this semester is in Oracle dBase administration.
As such, I have Oracle 9i Release 2 Enterprise Edition loaded on my computer, and though I disable the services when I'm not using it for school work and stuff (yes it is that much of a memory hog), the loss of 64 MB will cause some serious swapping no doubt with that running. I could perhaps go to tweak memory usage with Oracle, but ugh... This is yes under winXP also...I really could use the memory back, as well as the better gfx back...