Mcribs

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What seems to be the problem with your vid card? Perhaps a temp fix to that could put you through the waiting period.

Berto

My video card? That it's a turd is the main problem.

When it's cold (below 75F), the display becomes incredibly garbled with artifacts all over the screen and sometimes the display will freeze all except for the pointer which can move but do nothing. But after my box gets above 75F it garbles less and above 80F it runs mostly fine.

I ordered a card from some little online store (can't even remember the name now), an Asus Geforce 5700, and they sent me a box for a Maddog 5600 with an Albatron 5700ep and a driver CD from a completely different company than all those three. On their site they said the one I wanted was out of stock and I just gave up and am never shopping there again.

The garbling leads me to believe the memory may be defective, but the temp thing just bewilders me; I mean, aren't electronics supposed to function worse in high heat?

colinstu

Is this an agp card? The best agp card that I can remember is the ATI x1600pro. It is about one of the best agp cards (ATI atleast, or you could pay hundreds more for a better ati agp card).

jughead

Wait (if you can) until sometime in July. Before the Conroe core CPUs come out AMD is going to lower prices - so Athlon 64 prices are going to drop.

Mcribs

Berto, You have one screwed up card.

Has the card ever functioned correctly (minus when its above 80 degrees)?

Berto

I think it did work fine when I first got it, though DirectX was totally FUBAR in Windows, I installed and upgraded the win drivers a million times and directx ten million, but all directx programs were completely slow and garbled, but it did work pretty well in Linux at that time.

The garbling just keeps getting worse day by day too.

Mcribs

Try taking it out and cleaning it.

What type of video card does your mobo support? Perhaps you can buy the video card now and wait till prices come down to buy the rest.

Berto

My board only supports AGP, so the second option is out. But I never thought of cleaning it (D'oh!)

Mcribs

Your in a pretty good bind then.

Berto

Yeah but I'll probably have to wait a month anyway because my first paycheck will go towards my car insurance instead of my computer

Berto

Update:

Couldn't wait any longer and ordered today. The possibility of getting a better CPU was tempting, but since this new one is already much faster than my current, my impatience one this round.

I also had to change my video card again because the one I wanted went out of stock: XFX Geforce 7600GT

And I threw in this flash music player which plays FLAC: Cowon/JetAudio/iAudio U3 1GB MP3 Player

That brought the total to $602, but without the U3 it's $458 so I was actually under what I wanted to spend on my PC.

Thanks for all your input.

Mcribs

I wish you the best of luck then with your purchase.

Berto

Built my system Friday:

Doom 3, Ultra Setting, 1600x1200, 16x Antialiasing, Never drops below 40fps. I am very happy.