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Non-techie needing advice

Fleetboy

Fleetboy

Fleetboy

Associate
Joined
23 Aug 2008
Posts
28
I'm planning on dumping my HD4850 card as I have just about had enough of it crashing and freezing when going into any 3d game/application and wasted enough time re-installing drivers/catalyst etc. From what I've read on the web many people have had problems with this card.

I would like to move away from ATI as well and am thinking of a GTX460 as a good replacement, I think it will have an increase in performance but more importantly I'm after stability. The only game I play is Il-2 1946 flight sim offline at 1600x1200 and use Photoshop a lot too.

My processor is Intel 2 Quad core Q6600 @3.2 and mobo is IP35 Pro 775 with dual PCI-E X16 slots.

My qestions are:
1. Is it just a straight-forward job of pulling out the 4850 and plugging in the 460 into the same slot?
2. When I reboot will it see the new card and then i just have to install 460 driver?
3. Is there anything else I need to do?

Sorry if these are dumb questions but I've never changed a GPU before.

Cheers.
 
What's your PSU? Need to know if it's enough to power the 460.

1) Yes, just take the 4850 out, then slot in the 460.
2) You need to uninstall the 4850 drivers first before you take out the 4850, after you slot in the 460 you then install the drivers for it.
3) Make sure all power connectors are connected, and I would run something like Furmark for about 10 mins to see what max load temps are, and to see if the card is fine.
 
Uninstall the ATI drivers. Turn pc off at the wall. Remove ATI card. Insert Nvidia card and connect the neccessary power plugs. Turn on pc and download the latest Nvidia driver. All should be good.
 
I have a OCZ Xstream 600w PSU. Hopefully that will be sufficient.

Just out of interest, what sort of operating temp can I expect from the 460? My 4850 in 3d mode, when it decides to behave itself, plateaus at 91 deg which I think is quite hot for a GPU.

Thanks for the help so far.
 
The 4850s are extremely hot cards. Is yours the slimline/single slot model? If so it's likely just dust build up blocking the fins on the heatsink and thus causing the card to overheat and freeze during 3d applications.
 
Looks like the problems you've had are overheating problems, that is way too hot for thr 4850. My old 4870 only reached around 75c on max load. Try give the heatsinks a good dusting and see how the card is then.
 
Orcvader said:
Looks like the problems you've had are overheating problems, that is way too hot for thr 4850. My old 4870 only reached around 75c on max load. Try give the heatsinks a good dusting and see how the card is then.
Click to expand...

91c is actually quite cool for some 4850s :p. Mine went nearer to 100c under FurMark a few weeks after being de-dusted although it does depend on whether or not it's a single or dual slot cooler.
 
Thanks, how can I tell if it's a single or dual slot card? I haven't opened the case yet, will it be obvious? I know it's a sapphire model and came as a stock-built machine from oc. Have just run drivercleaner.net and that did find some stuff that might help with crashes but obviously doesn't have any bearing on the temp prob.

Thanks
 
Thanks Moothead, I'll open it up later and have a look and also check the dust situation.

As for how much I'm looking to spend, probably £125 tops. However, as I was made redundant last month I'll try anything to keep my 4850 going and not have to spend precious funds.

Cheers.
 
It looks like my 4850 card is the single slot variety. Everything looks amazingly clean inside my spacious Thermaltake Armor case and the fan and heatsinks look dust-free too. Disappointing as I was hoping to find it all clogged up!

It's like Fan City inside there with 6 fans excluding the GPU one. So I can only assume the card runs hot per normal.

BTW the PSU is 700w so I guess that won't restrict me on a GPU upgrade. The cooler on the mobo is a Freezer Pro 7. I might give that a quick clean up as there is some dust on the rad fins behind the fan.

Cheers.
 
Ok, cleaned up mobo cooler, checked board connections and fired pc up from cold. Immediately ran Furmark which gave a starting temp of 58 deg. After just 30 sec the screen froze (at just 61 deg). After I alt ctl del out to desktop I'm confronted with the dreaded VPU Recover error message that I've seen rather too much of over the last week.

So I'm really thinking the card has had it. Can't think of anything else to try.
 
I've now installed my new Asus gtx460 1Gb card and it needs 2 6-pin power connectors. I have used my existing cable that goes back to the PSU for one of them. The card came with a cable that has a 6-pin connector and leads going to TWO 4 pin power plugs. I have connected up one of these 4-pins to a spare 4-pin connector in the case and the card is up and running.

Do I need to connect the other 4-pin connector to a power supply as well or leave it dangling? In other words does the second 6-pin socket on the card need double power supply? The manual is useless.

What's it for otherwise?

Cheers
 
The adapter is a 6 pin connector to 2 molex connectors. It's just incase one molex connector is unable to supply enough power. If you have another molex connection I would connect it just incase. One PSU is enough for this, no need for double PSU.
 
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