Monitor suddenly crapped to hell and back

[Krylo]

A system restore should have reverted the drivers anyway.

In other words as I said before: Video Card = Fucked.

[Shyria Dracnoir]

Blugh.

[Shyria Dracnoir]

On review, maybe I didn't uninstall and reinstall the drivers properly. Doing another system restore to try and get a better look at things.

[Shyria Dracnoir]

Bluuuuuuuuugh, I hate technology sometimes.

Fuck this, I'm going to trawl the school forums and see if anyone can give me some resources on buying a replacement card.

[akaSM]

Try unplugging the card, cleaning the contacts and the slot and plug it back again. You can use a (damp) cotton cloth to clean the contacts of the card.

For the slot, compressed air would be the best option but, you can also do it the old NES way :3. Just try to keep your saliva in your mouth, not the slot :P

If the card's fucked up, you won't lose anything by trying.

For the suggestions on graphic cards, you'll need your processor model (right click in whatever My PC is called now -> properties) so that you don't end up getting a card that's too powerful for it. Nothing bad will happen if you do but, you don't want to get a card that could be bottlenecked by your processor, do you?

Also, getting over 2GB of VRAM in the card is overkill. You would need a extremely powerful card to use that amount of VRAM. So, if you find a *brand* card with 2GB of VRAM and another card, the exact same model with 3GB of VRAM, go with the cheaper one.

As for an actual suggestion, the Radeon 6850 is quite powerful and not that expensive, it should be around 150 USD at Newegg.

You can take a look here for some benchmark results. Even though (artificial) benchmarks don't really reflect daily usage, that page has also a cost/performance ratio for the cards, which is nice.

[Shyria Dracnoir]

Processor model is AMD Sempron 140 Processor.

[akaSM]

Well, that was unexpected O_o

Your processor has has a similar performance to my desktop processor (a 3GHz Pentium D)

Here's a thread I found about cards that would go nice with your processor. Remember to check the prices of the stuff they post, take the Radeon 6850 as a reference for price/performance.

EDIT: Also, take a look at your old card's performance, in case you don't want to get something that's less powerful than it. Just have in mind that in your old setup (sempron 140 + 8600 GTX) the card was most likely being bottlenecked by the processor. Even the slightly more powerful Pentium D bottlenecks it.

[akaSM]

Hmm, it seems the Radeon HD 4670 is a nice card for that processor, it's cheaper (around 50 USD) and won't get bottlenecked by your processor. This card is nice if you'll get a new PC sometime in the future.

So, I got 2 recomendations:

Radeon HD 6850

Pros:

• The best high end graphics card that has a reasonable price
• You can use it in a hypothetical new PC you could get, saving you a latter upgrade, making it (sort of) futureproof

Cons:

• Is't kinda expensive compared to the other option
• It WILL get bottlenecked by your current PC's processor

Bottomline: get this if getting a new PC is within your plans, you'll see it's true potential with that new PC.


Radeon HD 4670

Pros:

• It won't get bottlenecked by your current processor
• It's cheaper (around 1/3 of the other option's price)

Cons:

• It's not as powerful as the other option OR your old card

Bottomline: get this one if you don't want to spend a lot of money or you'll keep using your current PC for a long time. The card's not bad, I could run TF2 at 720p @ 60fps in high settings with my laptop which had a weaker card (a Radeon HD 3670).

Then again, my laptop had a better processor but, you should get a performance similar to what you had. Remember, your PC's bottleneck is the processor, not the graphics card.

[Shyria Dracnoir]

Getting a completely new PC isn't really an option at this point and I doubt I'll get another before something happens to really make this one obsolete, so the Radeon 4670 looks like the best bet.

[synkr0nized]

Based on those screenshots, I'd wager that's definitely a fried video card / failing video card. My mother's laptop a few years back was a model that was poorly designed inside and used cards that were prone to overheating.

Since it's your desktop that's at issue, at least for you replacing the card is waaaaay easier and useful. For me, since I took that laptop off her hands to mess with it when she got a new machine, I found that fixing the card and replacing it were both temporary "solutions", as neither addressed the real problem [the card/laptop design and cooling].



You have a Sempron: your machine is obsolete. :P
But yeah I'm seeing 4670 cards for around fifty bucks (US), which is a good price for a good value card, I guess. Just take a look at Newegg, for example, and sort video cards by a price range you are fine with to see what your options may be: e.g. 50-75 dollar cards.

But if you trust sellers on Amazon here's an 8800 GTS for just over sixty dollars. Also in that search I linked on Newegg some GT 430 and a 520 Fermi cards are competitively priced with that Radeon. In my opinion these are all better cards than the Radeon 4670.