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Graphics card thingy help

Xpress

Xpress

Strata Poster
In need of someone who has experience with PCI-E x16 graphics cards.

My ATI HD 4850 Radeon 512mb graphics card is steadily going down hill. It has all of the latest drivers , that don't seem to be helping, as I always seem to get the "Display driver has stopped working" right after the screen turned off and back on.

Before, I could run NoLimits at 100fps easily, now running the same ride I barely get 85 frames, and that's on a good day. Normally it runs around 60 now, and i constantly get lag. Today I pulled the card out to inspect what this thing has in it, and nearly burnt my hand on the fricken thing, and yes it has a fan too!

I'm looking for a good card that is plug n play, and will last a long time, preferably manufactured by Nvidia. I'd like to get a 1gb, and run at 100 frames or so. Also, because this computer isn't technically my computer, I can't be spending a boat load of cash on one.

I talked with a couple friends, and they recommended this card:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814187098

Seems to be good, but after reading the reviews, I'm not so sure about it (but then again NoLimits is the only gaming I do).

I'd prefer for one with an HDMI too. And if it helps, I do daily disk cleanups, and defrag once a week.

Any help I'd appreciate much.
 
I think to run NoLimits at a decent speed you wouldn't even need to spend $100...

I'm no pro or anything.... but anything above the nVidia 8 series will probably see you through. Also take into consideration the power that the card is going to use if you do get one that is a bit power hungry. And also, maybe consider upping your ram, or just upgrading it to DDR3 or something...
 
^ To add DDR3 units you have to have a motherboard that supports them, not something you can do because you feel like it. The performance difference between DDR2 and DDR3 is negligible...

Xpress it sounds like you have some heat issues, maybe the heat-sink/computer is clogged up with dust?
If so, you will have so do some cleaning, use dry compressed air in a spray-can to remove dust, remove dusty components (you don't have to disassemble everything though) like the video-card, and blow through everything (don't spin the fans with the compressed air since it may damage them).
Just be sure that you are careful, disconnect everything and ground yourself and the computer to reduce the chance of ESD damaging more. Using a vacuum cleaner may harm your computer.
Do you have any software that monitors the temperature of you hardware, in that case have a look to see if anything is really hot.

Could also be driver related, in some cases you have to remove the old drivers so that it won't be issues between old and new.

If the cleanup don't help with your problems. Then yes I would recommend you a GTS 250 (I got one myself) or maybe a new GTS450 if your budget allows for it. However the one that your friends might be a bad buy since it's a downgraded version of GTS250 (lower clock speeds) to allow for the smaller card, getting a full-size card is the better option, especially since you don't have a tiny fan that will make your ears bleed when you are running NL.
But if you can't fit a larger card in the case then it might be your best option...
 
Yes, I routinely clean the computer, as I have allergies, and can't have dust lying around.

"My" computer is a DELL Inspiron 537s, so it has a very thin case, and is rather quiet, but i'm not concerned about a 100% quiet computer, as normally I play music. My old computer was on the loud side.

dell_inspiron-537s.jpg


Total, I have less than 4" of space inside for a card, as you can see. Ontop of that, there is this ghey brace in the way, of which I'm not sure is completely necessary, so therefore there is no room inside for a full sized card. The power supply is a stock DELL power supply, or a 250 watt.

RAM is DDR2, and there is a max of 4gb inside already.

And are you certain a 512mb card would be fine? I do a lot of photos, and videos as well as video editing on here as well. Playing HD movies I can notice a significant amount of lag throughout the movie at times (Iron Man, Avatar, ect.). Like mentioned the card in it is a 512mb.

Also, if it helps:

img2779.jpg


img2777p.jpg


(photos taken before weekly cleaning- card performs the same clean or dirty)
 
Xpress said:
"My" computer is a DELL
Click to expand...

There's your problem.

I agree on the heat aswell. Where do you keep it and do you have something like speedfan or similar program that tell you your tempratures and stuff?
 
Ok, that would explain a lot about the advise you got, but there is one card at Newegg that is a bit better, it would cost about 15$ more though, but it would be the better choice for the "future": CLICK

Just be sure that you have a 6-pin connector for the card since it need it and that the power supply can handle it (but it probably shouldn't be a problem if you are running an ATI 4850, even though I can't find any low profile versions of that card...).

The amount of memory you have on the board, it depends on how big resolution you run on your display and how much textures you use wile for instance gaming.
About the lag you experience on HD movies is most likely due to either bad codecs or player not configured properly since you can easily run a 1080p movie smoothly on a simpler system, also this isn't really affected on the amount of memory you have on your graphics board.
Same things goes for video/picture editing, if you use a GPU accelerated software it uses the raw calculation power of the GPU more than it's memory.
And if you only run NL at a reasonable resolution then you really wont need more than 512 MB...

So if you have the power to handle those cards then go for it.

Just don't blame me if it won't work...


Another thing, if you have a normal Flatscreen (not one of those 3D ones) then you really don't need more than 60 FPS, since they can't show more. If anything higher FPS will make the image worse, I run "Vertical Sync" on everything, to eliminate the shearing that can occur.


EDIT:
Just saw your pictures now, first of all that don't look like an ATI 4850 (I think that you might have it confused with the ATI 4350 which this computer were sold with), then I have to say that the voltages you get from your PSU are whack. So there is no wonder why your computer is running badly at the moment.
I would suggest you to first have a look at the psu, either by disconnecting the old one and test to run your system with another psu or remove it and have someone test it...

I also had a look at an online power wattage estimator and getting either of those video-cards discussed would cause the computer to not work due to too high power requirements of the system...
 
^ So, if it is infact the PSU, then replacing it with something higher powered would not only solve the problems I'm having, but it would also allow me to run a better GC?
 
^ If it's a PSU related problem then theoretically it would be possible, the only thing though is that Dell is using a non ATX standard PSU, which could be troublesome to find...

Before you run off and just buys one, try and test your computer with another PSU, if you have one that is working laying around at home, "borrow" one from another computer in the house or lend one from a friend, so that you can test to see if the computer runs better and that the voltages are OK in speedfan (especially the +3.3V and +12V ones, you don't have to worry about the negative ones as much).

It looks like the PSU you have in that computer could be a TFX form factor. And after looking through what Newegg have, then I would go for this one: CLICK since I know that Seasonic is a really good PSU manufacturer. It's also the one that have the most juice on the 12V line, which makes it possible for you to drop in a more powerful video-card in the future (it's just under the "recommendation" of the GTS450 card in terms of power on the 12V line and the GTS250 seems to be more power hungry than the GTS450, but it might be possible to run run cards similar to these).
Just be sure to check if the mounting holes are the same and if the PSU have roughly the same dimensions as the one in your Dell.
Also note that none of the TFX PSU's have a 6-pin connector that the "more powerful" video-cards require so you would need to get an adapter for that.
 
And just my luck, the other PSU's I have are either modified for non computer functions, or non functioning :(

Looks like I gotta dig up my multi-meter...
 
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