• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Argh, killed my card (new rig)

bitslice

bitslice

bitslice

Permabanned
Joined
18 May 2006
Posts
9,036
just thought I'd share my pain.:rolleyes:

spent all day setting up an ASROCK 4COREDUAL-SATA2 with a Q6600.
(yes I know, not the best motherboard) purely as I already had an AGP 7800GS+ AGP card out of my old rig.

Eventually, I get to doing some benchmarks

I was sitting there thinking "a top fan would really help cool that top section",
so I pull back the sliding top (this is an old steel vastec case) to have a look-see


"Ping !"

"tinkle, tinkle, tinkle"

:eek:

kill the power, whip off the side panel, only to see an metal spring earthing clip sitting across my graphic cards PCA. :mad:

Turn back on, and see the pretty squiggles that I really didn't want to see.



Arrrrrrrrggggggghhhhhhh !!! :(


there you go, pain shared.




Advice needed:

Option 1.
I guess there is not much point in getting another AGP card,
but this board is limited to x4 lanes of PCI
- what PCI-E card is therefore a good choice ?


Option 2. (the unfeasibly expensive one)
Ditch motherboard, get reasonable PCI-E card and overclock the Q6600 ?
 
Depends what you want to do with the card tbh?

Maybe fish around for a cheap x800 GTO/XT PCI-E for 25-30 pounds, Don't think x4 PCI lane would hurt performance to bad if at all with this sort of card:-)
 
I just wanted to know what kind of card I could get,
I see people pairing 8800 class cards with similar quad core processors,
but there is no point in getting one of those if the x4 PCI-E lane mode is going to hold it back
(some of these cards need all 16 lanes to work)

what's the best x4 PCI-E card out there ?
 
Last edited:
From the benches Cyber-Mav linked looks like you'd still get decent performance even from a modern card like HD 3850 :)
 
thanks for the links Cyber-Mav, interesting. :-)

I'm a bit torn now, the x4 bus is not as bad as I thought, but still maybe too much of a slowdown on a modern game ?
I've just forked out £200+ purely to keep my old stupid AGP card; Whereas had I started from scratch I'd have picked completly different Processor/MB/RAM. (although I would have ended up spending a lot more)

The nearest PCI-E card to the AGP 7800GS+ appears to be a ATI Radeon X1950 Pro,
so I guess I'm £80 down if I replace it with that.
I'm loathed to chuck more money at something that's lost it's new-new-shiney-shiney appeal


-
 
Last edited:
Sorry to hear bout your card :(.

I don't usually suggest this as I'd usually just pick out a graphics card to get you going again but I think you should sell the motherboard on the bay and get this http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-000-OK.

Reason being is that you have a nice CPU there and not a great motherboard to tinker about with if you want to overclock as the voltages are limited on that board and I think the FSB wall is 280-300 which also limits your overclock. Also if you're going to buy a new card do you want to have a restraint on the power unleashed the moment the PC is turned on?. If doing this would mean you'd have to buy DDR2 also then I might be taking this too far and a simple X1950Pro would be perfect for just about the same performance of card although you'd have better IQ and the ability to run HDR and AA simultaneously as the 7 series from Nvidia couldn't manage it.

(If you are going to go for the upgrade rather than just replace the card)

Your 7800 dying is a sure sign that you should take up on the great selection of cards that run up to GTX performance today. Ranging from an incredibly low £129 (1 year warranty) to £138 (lifetime and 10 year warranty) the 8800GT is one great card for that price. Double the power of your old card with the ability to do AA/HDR and has matched IQ with the newest ATI cards and both manufacturers are impeccable.

It would cost about £210 for that motherboard with a graphics card with a big warranty but after what's just happened to your 7800, I think that could be your only sane option if buying a new card. So £210 for a decent motherboard and double the power graphics or £235 with 2gb of RAM. Or you could get this http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-085-OK&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=416 - It's only 1 year warranty though. The ATI cards have never really had a big warranty and in all fairness I've had 9800Pro, X800XT PE, X1900XT and 2900Pro and all are still working fine today.

Just a few options to think about from my point of view. I hope if anyone thinks any of my advice is a bit off for my motherboard choice then please correct me. I read through this a while ago and it seems great. http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17823631

I was actually a bit annoyed when I read about it as my Abit IP35Pro has one 16x speed lane and my second lane is only x4 and this motherboard which is nearly half the bloody price has TWO x16 slots!!! :mad: :p:D. You can't win them all :). Anyway, have a read through the motherboard thread and see what you think. See if all the BIOS options pictures on the first page entice you to want it :D, as well as the reviews. It might take some reading though and a good thing to note is that one of the reps posts here (still?) and was addressing problems as they got reported and wrote a few new BIOS's. Obviously there will be a lot more since I last looked so fire on in and get reading ;).

EDIT:
NOTE: The first 160 or so posts of this thread refer to the V1.2 BIOS that the board originally shipped with. V1.3 addresses 99% of the problems and you really should use the V1.3 (or higher) BIOS.
Click to expand...

I just noticed that on top of that motherboard thread. So it actually sounds to be going great.
 
Last edited:
your best bet now pal is to save some cash so hit the members market for a second hand gfx card. probably best to get yourself a x1900xt which can be had for around 50-60 quid on the members market and other second hand outlets.
good thing about a x1900xt is that your still getting an upgrade over your 7800 card, and going by the benches the x1900 doesnt get hit hard by the 4x bus, and its also a cheapo card to get in general.

rag that setup on till the end of this year if possible and you shoudl have enough cash by then to either dump in a new gfx card or stick in a new mobo and also a new gfx card.

but the main thing right now is to minimise the cost outlay, otherwise your going to sit back and cry at a lot of money being spent and not getting a high performance return.
 
Thanks for the input guys :-)
The X1900XTX is looking good, and there is one in OcUK B-grade if fleabay doesn't turn up anything. £50 looks to be the average, so I'm not out of pocket too much.
I should have pondered the pros/cons a bit longer, but really I haven't played any game for 7+ months so I've lost touch with what's good.

possible alternative was another £25 for the HD 3870 XT, as that comes with HDCP for blu-rip films, and would probably make more use of the quadcore ?

damm, it says "16 lane PCI bus required"
or is that just made up stuff ?
 
Last edited:
Get the 3870 if buying a card. That way you get warranty as well as a card that is about 2 times or more powerful than your 7800. The X1900XT/XTX are brilliant cards but they don't match up to the 3850/3870 and do not cost a lot more than the x1900.

You will get a small performance hit due to the x4 slot but not a lot as ATI are not as dependant as Nvidia on lane speeds. When you upgrade your motherboard in the future then you will have a small performance boost also.
 
I was in a similar situation and bought a 8800GT for this motherboard, unfortunately it doesn't like PCI-E 2.0 cards and as such is completely incompatible.

Just thought I'd post the warning as it resulted in me having to fork out for a new mobo in the end :/
 
Just a word of warning if you do get a HD 3000 series card make sure you have the latest bios (1.80 will provide support the 38XX range and 1.90 also added support for the 3650 and 3450 cards). Make sure you update the bios 1st otherwise you will have a nasty BSOD!

Asrock are just so slow with ATI card support, we had to send our HD3850 back because at the time there was no bios update for these new ATI cards for the 4core sata2.

My dads went from an AGP 7600GS that would produce screen corruption when you updated forceware drivers (no fualt of the GFX card) to that ATI HD card that simply wouldnt work out of the box!

We have tested an X1900XTX which worked faultlessly, but unfortunately it wasn’t quiet enough for him, so we then tried an 8600GT and its worked brilliantly ever since, cheap at 50quid and a real stinker of a gfx card!!

But anyway most importantly avoid AGP cards, they just cause more hassle then there worth on this board! Ironically that was the whole reason why we went for this board.

Its a very compromised board but if you don't overclock and providing its happy with your components its can prove to be a reliable mb :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom