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Replacement for x1800xl

Guardsmon

Guardsmon

Guardsmon

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Joined
4 Sep 2006
Posts
1,843
Location
Bristol
Hi, I bought my very much loved x1800xl all in wonder about a 6 months back now 2nd hand. never had any problems with it till last week, and mostly last night. it has a zalman vf9000 on it and enough power, but while playing BF2 the screen would go black for 10sec+ and then windows would come up with message saying it was reseting the graphics card settings, the game would then appear again with no other information except the terrain and people (so no map, names crosshairs anything)
This happed 4 times last night (restarted and checked settings each time, even tried to run it on lowest settings)

I'm thinking im probably needing a new card, but not really wanting to spend more than £100 (will stretch to £125 for extreme case)

my current rig is:
Hiper HPU-4B580 Type R 580W
Athlon 64 939 FX55 with zalman CNPS7700-CU
DFI LanParty UT RDX200CF-DR Crossfire
Corsair XMS 1GB pair
Corsaid value 1GB pair
x1800xl 256mb all in wonder
Samsung SpinPoint 80GB sata
Hitachi 400GB sata
NEC ND7173 Dual layer labelflash
Lian Li PC-7+

Dell 2407WFP 24" TFT

Any suggestions as to what to do? get cheap card that will run BF2 for a couple of months and then get a DX10 gfx card in 6+months. Or get a similar card to my x1800
O and I dont need it to be all in wonder any more.
Thanks
 
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If you're not interested in dx10 apps, I'd suggest a s/h X1900XT/XTX or similar to make do with until dx10 becomes more mainstream. You can get them here for around the £130-£150 mark, and more often than not, with a zalman VF900 cooler prefitted and with a some warranty left.
 
I'm a hunble student and £130+ is a little out of my price range and I've already got my zalman so its not like i need one already fitted, I'll move it across.
I've always been an ATI man, but i was just looking at a BFG 7600Gt
It's a lot cheaper and on the reviews someone has said it runs BF2 pretty well. Atm i'm only working and playing BF2 a few times a week. O but i am using my Dell 2407WFP, so i would prefer a card that can handle normal use at 1920x1200
 
7600GT is a fine card, these are the current best cards in their price bands for PCI-E:-

7600 GS (£69) , 7600 GT (£88) , 7900 GS (£108) , x1950 Pro (£125) , x1950 XT (£165) , 8800 GTS (£287) , 8800 GTX (£375) .

Pick your budget and get your card :cool:
 
melbourne720 said:
7600GT is a fine card, these are the current best cards in their price bands for PCI-E:-

7600 GS (£69) , 7600 GT (£88) , 7900 GS (£108) , x1950 Pro (£125) , x1950 XT (£165) , 8800 GTS (£287) , 8800 GTX (£375) .

Pick your budget and get your card :cool:
Click to expand...

i thought the pro was £152 or are those prices not including vat?
 
ok, so it looks to be between the 7600GT and the x1950pro, with the price ratio 2:3, is the pro really worth all that much more bearing in mind once dx10 prices drop later this yr or whenever i will probably upgrade?

o and does anyone have any idea why my x1800xl would be working fine again now in BF2?
 
In terms of resale, I would have thought the x1950 Pro would get a bit of a hammering when the mid range 8 series from NVidia come out. The 7600 GT would take less of a hammering.

If your x1800xl is working, looks like you won't have to upgrade! Are the temps going high, is the fan making any funny noises?
 
Did it say anything about ATI VPU Recover? If so, it's something that can be disabled from within CCC... can kick in to recover from the results of overheating (unlikely with your Zalman, unless it's come unseated or something) or just a nasty driver bug. What version of the Catalyst drivers are you using?
 
For some reason no programs can get the heat of the all-in-wonder x1000 series. dunno why, but it means i can't tell if the card is getting way to hot or not. but it does have a new zalman vf900-cu cooler on it.
I'm using version 1.2.2390. I've just checked and i didnt seem to have updated it since i reinstalled the card again a month back.
Thanks for the help guys, i have had any problems lately, but i havent really had the chance to test it out properly again, I will do this weekend.
 
As someone has already said, update to the latest drivers (Catalyst 7.1) and disable VPU recover from the ATi Control Panel. Also try reseating the Zalman cooler as it may have been mounted using cheapy thermal paste which is starting to dry up.

Don't be so hasty to spend £100 ;)
 
Oh, and if you still have problems after trying everything, I'd do a full reformat of Windows XP to make sure the problem isn't being caused by any nasties that you may have picked up over the months!

And if it STILL doesn't work then I suppose you could think about a new card :p:D
 
Do as suggested and reseat the cooler and clean and update your drivers.
Also have you tried any other games, you only mention BF2? It maybe ok in everything else.
At least the card works so you an try this stuff out.
Don't be in such a hurry to replace it :)
 
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