TLDR; GFX go boom, need upgrade/replacement advice and general upgrade strategy advice to spread cost.
My Nvidia GTS8800 seems to have died, for while now it's been showing the odd green artifact, and I've had a few unexpected crashes when playing videos.
Couple of days ago playing KSP I started seeing some random regular coloured streaks, then the video froze with the game running in the background, finally a black screen that I had to reboot from. No video on the reboot, turned it off walked away in annoyance and came back to it a few hours later and everything booted OK.
Same thing happened once more, and since then no video at all, I can hear the machine going through it's boot sequences etc. but no video. I have no spare cards to test out if it's the motherboard or the GFX card. I'm assuming at this stage it's the GFX card.
The machine is pretty old and I'm planning a complete upgrade this year some time.
So do I buy a cheap card to run in the machine now, or go for the full upgrade (I was waiting until the next round of GFX cards in order to be able to pick up one of the current cards at a better price). Or do I bite the bullet and buy one of the current reasonable spec cards. I'm reluctant to spend too much in case the motherboard/power supply took the gfx card out.
I'm looking to play @ 1080p with high detail on some of the older games (KSP, XCom etc.). I'd want my final upgrade / new machine to play XCom2, Fallout4, Elite Dangerous at 1080p on very high.
Not even sure what my GA-P35-DS3P (rev. 1.1) would support. CPU is a dual core pentium (can't see exactly what as I can't boot the damn thing to check!
) with 8gb RAM. Machine has been bullet proof since it was put together when I first bought it (ages ago).
Any advice or options I haven't considered?
Any recommendations for a suitable "tide me over" gfx card?
General advice needed about the upgrade path as well.... I normlly self build, and normally splash all the cash for a decent machine in 1 go, that machine has to last me a good few years. I always try and buy so that there's an upgrade path, but I probably leave it too long and end up here. I normally spend around the £900-£1k mark, but frankly I can't afford that for the next few years, seems a bit indulgent when there's so much other grown up stuff to spend on.
Is is feasible these days to buy a prebuilt base spec machine that would give me a good starting point where I could get all my music, apps nd office suite on and leave me needing just to swap in an SSD and a good GFX card a couple of months later to make it into a decent gaming setup, so that the cost is spread out a little? If so, which of the OC pre-builts would be a good starting point?
My Nvidia GTS8800 seems to have died, for while now it's been showing the odd green artifact, and I've had a few unexpected crashes when playing videos.
Couple of days ago playing KSP I started seeing some random regular coloured streaks, then the video froze with the game running in the background, finally a black screen that I had to reboot from. No video on the reboot, turned it off walked away in annoyance and came back to it a few hours later and everything booted OK.
Same thing happened once more, and since then no video at all, I can hear the machine going through it's boot sequences etc. but no video. I have no spare cards to test out if it's the motherboard or the GFX card. I'm assuming at this stage it's the GFX card.
The machine is pretty old and I'm planning a complete upgrade this year some time.
So do I buy a cheap card to run in the machine now, or go for the full upgrade (I was waiting until the next round of GFX cards in order to be able to pick up one of the current cards at a better price). Or do I bite the bullet and buy one of the current reasonable spec cards. I'm reluctant to spend too much in case the motherboard/power supply took the gfx card out.
I'm looking to play @ 1080p with high detail on some of the older games (KSP, XCom etc.). I'd want my final upgrade / new machine to play XCom2, Fallout4, Elite Dangerous at 1080p on very high.
Not even sure what my GA-P35-DS3P (rev. 1.1) would support. CPU is a dual core pentium (can't see exactly what as I can't boot the damn thing to check!
) with 8gb RAM. Machine has been bullet proof since it was put together when I first bought it (ages ago).Any advice or options I haven't considered?
Any recommendations for a suitable "tide me over" gfx card?
General advice needed about the upgrade path as well.... I normlly self build, and normally splash all the cash for a decent machine in 1 go, that machine has to last me a good few years. I always try and buy so that there's an upgrade path, but I probably leave it too long and end up here. I normally spend around the £900-£1k mark, but frankly I can't afford that for the next few years, seems a bit indulgent when there's so much other grown up stuff to spend on.
Is is feasible these days to buy a prebuilt base spec machine that would give me a good starting point where I could get all my music, apps nd office suite on and leave me needing just to swap in an SSD and a good GFX card a couple of months later to make it into a decent gaming setup, so that the cost is spread out a little? If so, which of the OC pre-builts would be a good starting point?
