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Radeon 2900XT HD 512mb

belial8321

belial8321

belial8321

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Joined
25 Jan 2011
Posts
757
Location
Solihull, Birmingham
Hey guys, as some of you may know i have been hunting to build a budget gaming rig, i am trying to save some money on card as i can't really afford a new one at the moment, i have this old 2900XT from my first home made rig, firstly - with a 955BE @ 4ghz or more, 4GB ddr3 1600 etc, would this run most modern games nicely @ 1280x768? (cant remember, but its a small lcd)

and secondly - after it has been running about 30 minutes the graphics, even on desktop, tend to go blocky and streaky, this happened after i tried to rebuild it, would this be because i did something wrong and it is overheating?
 
Card will be fine, I used to game happily on mine at 1280 x 1024.

Card however doesn't sound fine lol. Have you de-dusted it?
 
I'm imagining it's 1280x1024, and the answer is probably no. Even at 1280x1024 modern games will tax a 2900XT.

I've got a 3870 sat in my GFs PC here, and it's just about ok on things like Portal 2 @ 1280x1024, but you do need to turn down the AA.

Definately sounds like the GPU is overheating.
 
Ok, so i take card apart and rebuild? are there any aftermarket coolers available for this card range ? :o
and i know it wont handle things great, but my brother has a 9400GT 512mb and that seems to handle a fair amount of games on low, even dead space 2 :o and its just until i can afford a better card, 5830 or 5850 :) theres no point me just buying everything at once and having to make do with a crappy card (£60) or so, when i can save and wait till i can afford a decent card, and i heard a 5850 will rip through most games, will it even touch the overclocked 6970 in my main rig performance wise?
 
You might as well take the cooler off and re-apply thermal paste, give the fan a good dusting out at the same time.
For the resolution you've mentioned and similar small resolutions around that, I reckon you'd get away with the 2900XT for a while. Just leave the AA off and back down on some details if needed.
No sense buying something else as a stop-gap card when this would do a decent job. :) (Assuming it works properly after cleaning)
 
thing is it stopped working after i last cleaned it, meaning i was probably half asleep and put something back together wrong :O
 
Haha, nah it just randomly gets a lot hotter than it should, like say im cooking a pie or something that takes, say 25 minutes @ gas mark 6, but the pie burns in 10 minutes @ gas mark 3 XD
 
Electirc oven is best but if using GAS preheat the over then turn it off and bake the card for the time then remove it. Pretty safe that way!
 
2900xt should be fine, I have a Q6600 with one and it runs most things at 1440x900. I guess it depends on what your standards are, I'm fine playing games at 30fps, some people demand 60fps. It runs L4D2 at full with 4x anti aliasing and 4x antistropic filtering at 60fps.
 
Hope my reflow has worked on it :D i really can't afford another card this week!

And if it doesn't.. on board graphics! *shudder*
 
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