I have 2 problems or questions I have a home built by my SO the mobo
is a gigabyte and requires PCI-Express for a video card.
First, my 6600 died so i am looking for a new one to purchase. I don't
need much i am going to be doing some picture editing and I also play
WOW and somethings first person shooters(battlefield 1942) at lan
parties
Second I only have 1g i want to upgrade my memory (mobo requires
paired memory 4-slots) thought about getting 4 1gigs there is
currently 2 512mb=1Gig. I would like to know if I should just get
another pair of 512's and then have 2gig on the computer or replace
the 512 with the gigs.
I am looking to purchase both memory and card asap so any help is
wanted and appreciated. If you can give sites for comparison that
would be great too
On Oct 23, 12:22 am, Tiger Lily <asund...@webguys.com> wrote:
> I have 2 problems or questions I have a home built by my SO the mobo
> is a gigabyte and requires PCI-Express for a video card.
> First, my 6600 died so i am looking for a new one to purchase. I don't
> need much i am going to be doing some picture editing and I also play
> WOW and somethings first person shooters(battlefield 1942) at lan
> parties
>
> Second I only have 1g i want to upgrade my memory (mobo requires
> paired memory 4-slots) thought about getting 4 1gigs there is
> currently 2 512mb=1Gig. I would like to know if I should just get
> another pair of 512's and then have 2gig on the computer or replace
> the 512 with the gigs.
>
> I am looking to purchase both memory and card asap so any help is
> wanted and appreciated. If you can give sites for comparison that
> would be great too
>
> Thanks,
>
> TL
P.S. the card needs to be XP Pro and Vista Ultimate compatible
On Tue, 23 Oct 2007 05:22:57 -0000, Tiger Lily
<asundman@webguys.com> wrote:
> I have 2 problems or questions I have a home built by my SO the mobo
>is a gigabyte and requires PCI-Express for a video card.
>First, my 6600 died so i am looking for a new one to purchase. I don't
>need much i am going to be doing some picture editing and I also play
>WOW and somethings first person shooters(battlefield 1942) at lan
>parties
Without a budget, there is no way to recommend.
You wrote 6600 but that is not a card it is a sub-family,
several cards have different performance including plain
6600 and 6600GT. You wrote "don't need much" but that is
wrong as 1st person shooters are exactly where "much" is
needed, to play not just one game today but a few in the
future.
Today's modern gen. equivalent with some 1st person shooter
capability would be 8600GT. Over the longer term an 8800GTS
is a better value. If the budget won't stretch for these
then consider ATI 2600XT.
>
>
>Second I only have 1g i want to upgrade my memory (mobo requires
>paired memory 4-slots) thought about getting 4 1gigs there is
>currently 2 512mb=1Gig. I would like to know if I should just get
>another pair of 512's and then have 2gig on the computer or replace
>the 512 with the gigs.
Get 2 x 1GB modules.
>
>I am looking to purchase both memory and card asap so any help is
>wanted and appreciated. If you can give sites for comparison that
>would be great too
On Oct 23, 2:36 am, kony <s...@spam.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Oct 2007 05:22:57 -0000, Tiger Lily
>
> <asund...@webguys.com> wrote:
> > I have 2 problems or questions I have a home built by my SO the mobo
> >is a gigabyte and requires PCI-Express for a video card.
> >First, my 6600 died so i am looking for a new one to purchase. I don't
> >need much i am going to be doing some picture editing and I also play
> >WOW and somethings first person shooters(battlefield 1942) at lan
> >parties
>
> Without a budget, there is no way to recommend.
>
> You wrote 6600 but that is not a card it is a sub-family,
> several cards have different performance including plain
> 6600 and 6600GT. You wrote "don't need much" but that is
> wrong as 1st person shooters are exactly where "much" is
> needed, to play not just one game today but a few in the
> future.
>
> Today's modern gen. equivalent with some 1st person shooter
> capability would be 8600GT. Over the longer term an 8800GTS
> is a better value. If the budget won't stretch for these
> then consider ATI 2600XT.
>
The card is an Nvidia 6600GT... I will not touch an ATI if my life
depends on it Dell has their hands into it. From what other have said
i should be looking to at least 8600 or 8500GT.. What makers give a
lifetime warranty??
On Fri, 26 Oct 2007 16:29:04 -0700, Tiger Lily
<asundman@webguys.com> wrote:
>> You wrote 6600 but that is not a card it is a sub-family,
>> several cards have different performance including plain
>> 6600 and 6600GT. You wrote "don't need much" but that is
>> wrong as 1st person shooters are exactly where "much" is
>> needed, to play not just one game today but a few in the
>> future.
>>
>> Today's modern gen. equivalent with some 1st person shooter
>> capability would be 8600GT. Over the longer term an 8800GTS
>> is a better value. If the budget won't stretch for these
>> then consider ATI 2600XT.
>>
>The card is an Nvidia 6600GT... I will not touch an ATI if my life
>depends on it Dell has their hands into it.
I know what you mean, I avoid ATI too, would need quite an
enticement to gamble on them.
>From what other have said
>i should be looking to at least 8600 or 8500GT.. What makers give a
>lifetime warranty??
Lifetime warranty is asking too much, and in the video card
industry, "lifetime" doesn't even mean the same thing as in
many industries, it means "lifetime until we move on to the
next generation of GPUs/designs", which seems like fraud to
me in some instances, but unfortunately it is a factor to
beware of.
Generally, if your system has adequate ventilation and good
power (things the warranty shouldn't cover anyway, they
should not have to cover a failure not due to their fault),
there are mainly two reasons why a card would fail, the same
two problems plaguing a lot of different PC hardware: fan
and capacitors.
Today capacitor problems are less common except for very
cheap/budgetized designs (or overheating as related to
inadequate case ventilation) or overclocking (when margins
are slim on a design, exceeding the design capability
requires the one making the change is the one who assesses
the impact).
As for fans, the state of the industry is still a sorry one.
They tend to be high RPM, short-lived, noisey. There are
many 3rd party heatsinks available to replace one with a
failed fan, but unfortunately most of those have fans not so
much better in quality to last the life of the system, so it
is a perpetual maintenance item. Maintenance on a
(contextually) reasonable quality fan might only mean
cleaning dust out and relubing periodically, but it is a
factor on any "gaming" performance video card.
Some may thing a passive design is better, and it is if the
goal is only to use the card for a moderate term instead of
the anticipated lifespan of a system (being a rough ballpark
of 10 years, even if it means use by a 2nd owner after the
primary moves on to a higher performance system), but
unfortunately a passive design tends to only address GPU
(and sometimes memory) stability, not long term heating of
the PCB which can cause delamination of the layers, long
term heating of the 'fets which can break down the junction
or at least epoxy casing, and especially not the wear on the
capacitors.
I have probably bored you by now with this trivia, but the
main point is that lifetime warranty or not, the only good
long term solution is to replace a heatsink with one having
a high quality, low RPM, dual ball bearing fan. While a
warranty of a couple years is useful, any card is expected
to have a fan failure (when high performance type card)
within it's lifetime but then there is system downtime and
expense to RMA the product. It might only be my subjective
opinion (as well as those who I have sold systems to who are
insulated from the problem by my effort to prevent the
shorter term failures), but I feel if long term service /
warranty is a factor, the real need is not the warranty but
to take matters into your own hands and seek a heatsink with
a high quality low RPM dual ball bearing fan, doing whatever
is needed to reach that goal.
I feel like I'm preaching on this, but I have not had any
video card failures in years except cards that were DOA.
For an example of one of my successful attempts at modifying
a video card to achieve a 10 year survival rate (granted,
it's nowhere near 10 years old yet, but based on past
experience it should pass the test of time), consider adding
some heatsink which accomdates a standard sized quality fan
like a 60x15-20mm (thickness) model. I offer the following
example which uses a proprietary fan but I had several of
same model fan, the concept being to use a heatsink that
allows a good quality fan and even then, a fan you can
replace later without undue system downtime or expense.
The pictured card recycles an old Celeron heatsink chopped
down to size plus a Pentium 3 fan on it reduced in RPM. http://69.36.166.207/usr_1034/video/7600gt.jpg
Certainly other heatsinks and fans are an option but this
was such a good example of using what parts are available
and achieving a result of a very long anticipated life in
addition to nearly silent operation. Most gaming cards
produce more heat than 7600GT, but 8600GT is not
significantly different and would run acceptibly in temp and
performance with a similar efficiency heatsink.
Sadly I'm suggesting that if long term use of a gaming video
card is important, you have to take matters into your own
hands as the industry is most concerned with marketing
concepts and/or low cost, not long life in conjunction with
quiet operation.
Anyway enough of my rant about video card lifespans, so long
as you relube the fan every year or so, it should at least
last long enough that the card is of not much value anymore,
meaning the best value is to buy based on price, to shop
around a bit and seek a card with a rebate for example.
This can at least cut in half the final cost of the card
compared to MSRP suggested price. If products are bought at
such a discount, if it were ever to fail you have minimal
loss to then upgrade to a newer product using same buying
strategy again, and actually no cost:technology: performance
loss since a newer replacement product with newer generation
GPU will have higher performance.
In the end I suppose I am disagreeing with the ideal benefit
of lifetime warranty and instead stressing paying the least
amount possible (all else equal like GPU, memory type/speed
and bus width) then with the savings, deciding to put forth
effort to replace with a custom fan, replace fan later, or
just buy another card sooner. Even in best case scenario a
warranty that covers a failure means taking time to seek and
complete RMA process, including packing and paying to ship a
card off, then a waiting period without a video card until
the replacement arrives... and this is the ideal situation
if nothing goes wrong. This time, expense, effort, is (IMO)
more than just ensuring good chassis ventilation (which the
rest of the system benefits from too) and quality fan
replacement.
How funny it is that I wrote so much about "lifetime
warranty", but video card fan failures are a pet peeve of
mine, they tend to be the shortest lived part in an
otherwise well thought out system and I always build for
long term *touchless* (except cleaning out dust) systems.
Video Card and Memory Problems 
Linear Mode
