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BFG 8800GTX 768MB OC - R.I.P. So what now?

NoiseKraft

NoiseKraft

NoiseKraft

Associate
Joined
6 Feb 2010
Posts
48
Yea it finally died :( I paid £500 or so when I first got it like 100 years ago or thats how long it feels anyway.

Now I only have a budget of around £80 untill a few months time and I need to get the biggest bang for my bucks, the trouble is I am way way out of the loop and I really don't know what to buy, I've tried a little research but the model numbers are just confusing me. The max res on my monitors are 1400x900 (not sure if that helps)

Thanks in advance guys n gals.

Noisey
 
Noise, you say you will have more money in a few months? is this for an upgrade card? IF so, why not pick up a working card off the members market or that auction site for now, and then buy a bigger better card in a few months time when you can affrod it?
 
I know how you feel noisekraft. I'm here if you need someone to talk to. It's ok to grieve your loss.

Oven trick if you're brave, might last you a few months, or might still give you problems.

I did the oven trick on mine but I still had the odd game crash for a few months, now it wont play games at all (except very old ones), seems to be running fine for desktop use. If I try and run a game it will just crash the pc, most likely going over a certain vram limit, where some kind of corruption/fault occurs.

A 9800GT could do you fine for a bit as a filler option. Can be found for under £80. Standard, and green edition.
 
Id go for a GTS 250, runs on my girlfirends machine really well at that resolution. The 250 is basically a rebadged 9800 I think
 
Shame you cant access mm, as there are 260s on there for your budget. I would defo go 2nd hand for your budget and get something like ati 4850 or 4870. Nvidia wise 9800gt or 250gts. If you can find a little more then 5770 or 4890.
 
^250GTS is actually a rebadged 9800GTX+ with lower power consumption so not too shabby at all. Prices haven't budged for like a year though which is slightly disappointing. I'd steer clear of the 9800GT personally.
 
Get the 8800Gtx sent off for repair (lifetime warranty). New one arrives sell it on ebay. Save up some money and replace it with hardware which will be money well spent.

The 8800Gtx actually has loads more life in it. When i replaced mine doing the same as above it was able to play Bf BC2 all on high.
 
matthab said:
Get the 8800Gtx sent off for repair (lifetime warranty). New one arrives sell it on ebay. Save up some money and replace it with hardware which will be money well spent.

The 8800Gtx actually has loads more life in it. When i replaced mine doing the same as above it was able to play Bf BC2 all on high.
Click to expand...

Great idea, didn't think about that. Mine was nvidia reference with a 1 year I think, maybe 2 :rolleyes:

the card is a beast still. It definitely has loads of power in it, as long as nothing fails on it, like vram!
 
UPDATE:

I took apart my 8800 placed on a tray with tinfoil and baked it at GasMark 6 for exactly 6 mins...

*drum roll*

It only bloody worked!

So now I have some borrowed time untill I can get me a real upgrade in a couple of months. (with luck)

Thanks for the suggestion Marine-RX179 and all those that egg'd me on to do it.

Noisey. :)
 
Which way did you face it on the tray? if you did it the way it sits in a case did you put a foil ball under the other end to support it level?

have you tested any games yet? tried l4d or l4d2?
post back if you still get any crashes.

think mine was in for about 10-12 mins.
 
Heres what I did step by step....

1. I removed the heat sink and fan.
2. I made sure that all the heat pads(white squares) were on the heat sink side and not on the circuit board & using white spirit and a cloth I cleaned off the heat paste on the GPU and heatsink.
3. Got a baking tray and layed down tinfoil on it so there was no food contamination. Made 2 sausage shapes out of tin foil about half an inch thick and turned the board so that the Capacitors were facing downwards and so that most of the solders were facing up and laid the board on to the foil sausages making a table shape.
4. Preheated the oven on GasMark6 for about 10 mins.
5. Got my stop watch ready.
6. Opened the oven door and placed the baking tray and card on the top rack and started my stopwatch and closed the door.
7. At 5 minutes and 55 seconds I opened the door and took out the card and placed it on the kitchen counter to cool natuarally. It might be worth mentioning that it did smell of solder burning and a hint of a plastic burning smell.
8. Used nice new heat paste on the gpu and assembled the card.
9. Chanted the words "here goes nothing" 5 times.
10. Installed and tested.

The card use to came up with all sorts of random artifacts strait from bios screen so I knew I had improved something strait away when everything looked normal.

I tested it on Dragon Age: Origins since that is the game it started playing up on and everything was fine, I went on to play Singularity for 2 hours on max
settings and it was 100% fine.

I fired up a few of my installed games after your request for feedback and the following games were tested and worked fine: CoD4, BC2, Batman Arkham Asylum and Dirt2. All on max settings and other than a few moments of low FPS on demanding moments in-game the card ran fine.

Noisey.
 
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