Help - 8800GTX has died!

[ChristopherP]

So my EVGA nVidia 8800GTX 768mb has died a horrible death.


Blue screen, crashing, rebooting, artifacting - the PC is unusable.

Unfortunately, i'm broke - so need a cheap PCI-EX card to be able to use my PC again.

Aria have two or three on offer...

Do any of these seem a good buy, and if so which is best? I'm very out of touch with PC hardware at the moment... I haven't really paid too much attention to it since I built this rig in my 1st year of Uni!

Cheers

Chris

XFX ATI Radeon HD 4650 XXX 512MB DDR2 PCI-Express Graphics Card £35.24 inc VAT

XFX ATI Radeon HD 4350 1024MB DDR2 PCI-Express Graphics Card
£32.84 inc VAT

XFX ATI Radeon HD 4350 512MB DDR2 PCI-Express Graphics Card
£25.84

 

[Ian]

Are you looking to do much gaming on the machine?

The 4650 is the best option from that list and isn't too expensive - I'd probably go for that one . If you don't do any gaming then the cheap £25 one would be fine.

Out of interest, have you tried that card in another machine just to be sure that it is knackered? It might be worth checking that the fan works ok and that the heatsink is correctly attached (+paste).

 

[Abarbarian]

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/181962

If you can afford the extra tenner then this 4670 is a good buy.

Otherwise that 4650 looks a steal.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Aye, 4650 is the best bet for the money.

It's a shame you can't afford a little more as you can get an Nvidia 9800GTX for about 65 quid which is basically the same as the 8800GTX that died on you.

 

[ChristopherP]

Ideally I would like to do some gaming - I play Flight Simulator X which is VERY demanding (even my 8800GTX couldn't hack max settings)

HOWEVER

I can't really afford anything great at the moment.

Flops: I will have a look at the 9800GTX, that might just be a viable option if performance is the same.

Also: My cousin sent me a message saying he has a 9800GX2 going spare if I needed it, though from reading up on it, looks like thats quite a powerful card - and hence price is probably going to be an issue so may be a no go.

 

[ChristopherP]

Ian: Fan is working correctly, I gave the PC a good hoovering this morning, blew the dust out of the heatsink and made sure it was clean.

Reading online about it, may be a soldering issue as apparently baking it in the oven might fix it. similar thing to the xbox 360 problem. I'm not going to mess about with that though.

I dont think its a heat issue as it fails right from the word go - not just under load or after its warmed up etc.

Hmm.