visioN Posted January 30, 2014 Posted January 30, 2014 I've had ATI & Nvida over the years... not had many issues regarding drivers with either! Got a ATI Radeon HD 6850 at the moment but is a bit old... might upgrade at some point but does the trick at the mo!
mrbios Posted January 30, 2014 Posted January 30, 2014 (edited) Ive got a gigabyte windforce 3x gtx670 I'm selling which a mate was meant to have, though it's been ages since he said he'd have it (no response on steam or facebook for over a week) so I'm tempted just to sell it on instead. Interested? (Just realised how massively out of date my sig is! Time for an update) EDIT: I'll never understand these complaints of "drivers are bad on X brand" the drivers are fine, often the issue is with individual games which can happen to both brands, and they're always fixing them and releasing updates. I've never once had a graphics card by either brand where the drivers have been genuinely awful. Edited January 30, 2014 by mrbios
hawc Posted January 30, 2014 Posted January 30, 2014 Hang on a sec @visioN what is with your speedtest?
MrKJLS Posted January 30, 2014 Posted January 30, 2014 Nvidia GTX 760 4GB GDDR5. I have one and it's really good. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Palit-GeForce-Jetstream-Graphics-Technology/dp/B00FWN9PPQ/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1391107563&sr=8-4&keywords=gtx+760+4gb
LosOjos Posted January 30, 2014 Posted January 30, 2014 EDIT: I'll never understand these complaints of "drivers are bad on X brand" the drivers are fine, often the issue is with individual games which can happen to both brands, and they're always fixing them and releasing updates. I've never once had a graphics card by either brand where the drivers have been genuinely awful. BSODs when watching streaming video which stopped when I disabled part of AMDs driver is a driver problem, nothing to do with games. There are many, many people who have had exactly the same issue as me and the fix varies from removing a stick of RAM (!!!) to installing older drivers and beyond. In my case, I'm still not sure whether it was hard-setting the system RAM size in msconfig or disabling "ATI External Events" service. Either way, it's a driver issue. I'm not saying these issues are exclusive to AMD but in all my time using NVidia I had one beta driver release cause BSODs, reverting to previous fixed it. Nothing like the faff I've had trying to get this AMD card to stop BSOD'ing on me. 1
Rawns Posted January 31, 2014 Author Posted January 31, 2014 Update. @mac_shinobi sent me a very useful thread on GPU repair guides (https://forums.ebuyer.com/showthread.php/73485-*Graphics-card-failure-repair-guide*). I thought that if my card really was on the way out, then I had nothing to loose so gave it a go. So I stripped the GPU down to it's bare bones, gave it a deep clean, a dab of thermal paste etc and stuck it all back together. Got the card back in yesterday and played a few solid hours of ARMAII: Wastelands. No crashes or lock ups at all. Looking good so far! I'm happy as I don't have to splash out a wad of cash on a new GPU. On the flip side, I'm slightly gutted that it is working as I could do with (well, I want) a newer GPU! However, Saved cash > new GPU. I'll be gaming over the W/E and really test it and update with the results... 1
featured_spectre Posted January 31, 2014 Posted January 31, 2014 My steam library is still downloading/installing...stuck 40 games on the queue, hoping they'll be done by the time I get home. lol *edit* @Rawns we have a somewhat similar spec machine, do you have the stock cooler on the CPU or do you have an after market?
LosOjos Posted January 31, 2014 Posted January 31, 2014 Update. @mac_shinobi sent me a very useful thread on GPU repair guides (https://forums.ebuyer.com/showthread.php/73485-*Graphics-card-failure-repair-guide*). I thought that if my card really was on the way out, then I had nothing to loose so gave it a go. So I stripped the GPU down to it's bare bones, gave it a deep clean, a dab of thermal paste etc and stuck it all back together. Got the card back in yesterday and played a few solid hours of ARMAII: Wastelands. No crashes or lock ups at all. Looking good so far! I'm happy as I don't have to splash out a wad of cash on a new GPU. On the flip side, I'm slightly gutted that it is working as I could do with (well, I want) a newer GPU! However, Saved cash > new GPU. I'll be gaming over the W/E and really test it and update with the results... Great news on the card, an x80 range would be a shame to see die If you still have the bug for a new GPU, at least now it's not urgent so you can save up and replace with a newer generation x80 range that should last you a good few years more than an x60 or below - just make sure when you do take the plunge to get at least a gen 6 card for ShadowPlay and Shield compatibility, just in case 2
mac_shinobi Posted January 31, 2014 Posted January 31, 2014 (edited) Update. @mac_shinobi sent me a very useful thread on GPU repair guides (https://forums.ebuyer.com/showthread.php/73485-*Graphics-card-failure-repair-guide*). I thought that if my card really was on the way out, then I had nothing to loose so gave it a go. So I stripped the GPU down to it's bare bones, gave it a deep clean, a dab of thermal paste etc and stuck it all back together. Got the card back in yesterday and played a few solid hours of ARMAII: Wastelands. No crashes or lock ups at all. Looking good so far! I'm happy as I don't have to splash out a wad of cash on a new GPU. On the flip side, I'm slightly gutted that it is working as I could do with (well, I want) a newer GPU! However, Saved cash > new GPU. I'll be gaming over the W/E and really test it and update with the results... no problem at all - I would be interested to see what the GPU Temps are showing up as after cleaning it up and applying new thermal paste etc Am sure Nvidia have a utility to show what the GPU Temp is running at ( under full load ie when playing a game and when not doing anything ie idling ) side note - as above will allow you to save up more money to get a better GPU later on Edited January 31, 2014 by mac_shinobi 1
Rawns Posted January 31, 2014 Author Posted January 31, 2014 @Rawns we have a somewhat similar spec machine, do you have the stock cooler on the CPU or do you have an after market? I'm just using the Stock cooler with the CPU. I've not over clocked it at all and monitoring the temp, it rarely goes over 50 degrees C, even when gaming! Plus the fan is really quiet on it anyway. 1
featured_spectre Posted January 31, 2014 Posted January 31, 2014 No worries. I got a bit worried when it hit 55C last night (never had a machine go above 30 before). Might invest in a mini water cooling unit for the CPU
visioN Posted January 31, 2014 Posted January 31, 2014 Hang on a sec @visioN what is with your speedtest? @hawc yeah got a pretty good upload speed!
mac_shinobi Posted February 5, 2014 Posted February 5, 2014 Update. @mac_shinobi sent me a very useful thread on GPU repair guides (https://forums.ebuyer.com/showthread.php/73485-*Graphics-card-failure-repair-guide*). I thought that if my card really was on the way out, then I had nothing to loose so gave it a go. So I stripped the GPU down to it's bare bones, gave it a deep clean, a dab of thermal paste etc and stuck it all back together. Got the card back in yesterday and played a few solid hours of ARMAII: Wastelands. No crashes or lock ups at all. Looking good so far! I'm happy as I don't have to splash out a wad of cash on a new GPU. On the flip side, I'm slightly gutted that it is working as I could do with (well, I want) a newer GPU! However, Saved cash > new GPU. I'll be gaming over the W/E and really test it and update with the results... Just wanted to post this on here for future reference, the guide goes through re-flowing the solder which I advised against and only to do that as a very very last resort if cleaning and re applying thermal paste did not help / make any difference etc. Obviously cleaning off the old thermal paste which was clearly not doing much in the way of transferring the heat from the GPU to the heatsink etc and re applying new thermal paste has allowed the GTX 280 to continue to work correctly without issue(s) Most likely an obvious thing from @Rawns comment but just on the off chance someone finds this article in the future, Don't want them killing there graphics card due to trying to do a solder re-flow first. 1
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