A few questions for the masters!

[Darkcon]

Hi there, been reading these forums for awhile now, learning about overclocking, unlocking pipes, etc, and had a few questions for the gfx card gurus

Im by far not a rich man, and I pretty much have a choice between 8600gt 512mb 84$nz card(which i think is actually a 256mb card, and the rest shared system memory?) or a 8800gs card 185$nz(little iffy on the price there), which is made by gigabyte(which I no longer trust, any opinions on gigabyte cards?), which will bring me to another question later

which of these to is best bang for buck?, and has more overclocking/unlocking potential?

and the main question I wanted to ask, I have an gigabyte 8400gs(yea I know, not for gaming) that worked well for 2 months, then all of a sudden stopped one day, then the next day I rebooted, and it worked again, and a couple days later stoped, and has been repeating this for the last 3 months

the motherboard I have is a M2A-VM Asus board 1705 rev bios, with onboard x1250 gfx card that uses system memory, and the 8400gs, is a gigabyte 256mb with turbocache

I had a ill formed theory that the cards might cause some problems with each other in some way?

If not, what are the possible reasons some days it works, and some days it just doesnt?

Odditys I've noticed about this 8400gs, is..I have a heater, pointed at my feet, and it heats my computer a bit if I turn it on(not enough to do any dmg), but if I leave the heater on awhile, and then reboot the computer...the card works!, as I was typing this, I confirmed it,(heaters on now) by rebooting my computer..a possible component is failing on the card, and the heat somehow makes it work? any theorys appreciated!

 

[eidairaman1]

can you provide all specs of the machine that is giving you fits?

 

[hat]

Gigabyte cards are fine. It's the motherboards that are iffy these days. Actually all video cards are fine, at least on the nv side, they're all made by Foxconn anyway, they're just distributed among xfx, bfg, evga etc and they get to play with them however they want, new coolers, higher clocks etc. Really you're just paying for the brand.

As for your 8600gt, it's 512mb onboard. I've never seen an 8600gt with turboshit (turbocache)

I say 8800gs

 

[pbmaster]

I agree with Hat, go for the 8800 GS. You should see a much higher performance increase with it than the 8600 GT.

 

[WarEagleAU]

Also, that 8800GS should clock better.

As for your card, Im wondering if there is a loose component on their. Maybe a diode, cap, resistor or some such. Or maybe dust, dirt, debris is blocking the connection some how?

 

[Darkcon]

can you provide all specs of the machine that is giving you fits?

budjet system specs of mine:

M2A-VM motherboard with PCI-E X16 slot(real, not 8x faker slot), 690G chip on the thing(onboard x1250gfx)
2gb kingston PC2-5300 ram
AMD Sempron Processor 3200+ 1.80ghz(was cheap and came with board for cheaper)
Western Digital 500gb ATA hd
X-Power 400w PSU with 120mm fan
Gigabyte 8400gs with turboshit(was passive cooling, getting 58c idle, 65c load, have since strapped a fan onto the heat sink that came with it, now gets 35c idle 41c load)

My old AMD 3000+ 1gb ddr 400, 6600gt system runs games better currently, I was hoping it was the 8400gs in my new system slowing it down so heavily before it got weird on me, now Im hoping its the 8400gs failing, and not something else lol

 

[WarEagleAU]

Hmm, while it may not hinder anything, that Power Supply looks weak. Im not sure who the builder is but that could be causing problems with your video card as well.

 

[Darkcon]

Also, that 8800GS should clock better.

As for your card, Im wondering if there is a loose component on their. Maybe a diode, cap, resistor or some such. Or maybe dust, dirt, debris is blocking the connection some how?

I've checked the caps, they seem to be ok, the card is one of those lead free(RoHS compliant) cards, so I'm unsure of how to melt the solder on it, to make sure everythings connected properly

As for dirt and dust its relatively new and appears very clean..tho I've noticed all spots that were previously silver on the cards(vacant dots where components could be for other models on the pcb) have turned pitch black, possible due to the high sulfur content in the air in my town, its surface only, but, it could cause something I think, the resistors solder all looks normally silverish, and the memory chips have there pins under them so I cant tell if they have been effected by this, all the contacts on the pci-e at the bottom of the card are still gold colored(our air sucks, it even turns brass taps black, and silverware black in a couple of weeks)

Oh, and as of a few days ago, seeing as I figured its faulty, I gave it a vmod to 1.48 core, 2.1 mem, clock to 690/1600/490 from 459/918/400, and it runs stable, untill i reboot and it doesnt work again for a couple of days(which happened when it was stock anyway), Good guilt free OCing practise!

 

[Darkcon]

Hmm, while it may not hinder anything, that Power Supply looks weak. Im not sure who the builder is but that could be causing problems with your video card as well.

Is there any way to test load capacity of it, or generally test if its decent? or would buying a 450w psu be the better option in that case?, I'd hate to get a new gfx card only to have it go weird a few months down the line for the same problem

I found this reveiw of my PSU, http://www.hardware.info/productdb/bGpkZ5ibmA/viewproduct/AOpen_Xpower_400W/

 

[Darkcon]

Gigabyte cards are fine. It's the motherboards that are iffy these days. Actually all video cards are fine, at least on the nv side, they're all made by Foxconn anyway, they're just distributed among xfx, bfg, evga etc and they get to play with them however they want, new coolers, higher clocks etc. Really you're just paying for the brand.

As for your 8600gt, it's 512mb onboard. I've never seen an 8600gt with turboshit (turbocache)

I say 8800gs

I thought it might be turbocache because of the page here said 512mb at the top, and 256mb gddr3 in the specs, so if they dont exist its probably a listing error(potential free card woot!) http://www.nzoczone.com/product_info.php?products_id=7537

 

[eidairaman1]

hate to be the bearer of bad news but turbocache uses system ram,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TurboCache

so that reduces the amt of ram available to the OS, its just like IGP chips without dedicated ram.

 

[Darkcon]

hate to be the bearer of bad news but turbocache uses system ram,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TurboCache

yea I know, but guy above says hes not seen a 8600gt with turbocache, and they dont exist, then the item listing with 2 different memory values(512mb in main listing, 256mb DDR3 in specs listed, then its either turbocache(bad), or more likely a listing error(free stuff when they have to supply as listed! ) lol