my 3870 is broken what next??

[Fishboy]

Hi All
Ok the fan fix didn't work so I amuse my card is broke only had it just over two years

On the bright side I'm now the proud owner of a zalman v770 vgu cooler which is compatible with the following cards Nvidia Gforce 7600 series,6600 series,9600GT series,9600GSO series,9400GT series,8600GTS series, 7900,7800 and 7600.

I'm looking for something better than the ATI 3870 and could do with some advice.

Thanks all

[MSIC]

What is your budget, and what games do you play at what resolutions?
It is very easy to give some low-cost recommendations that can be as good as the 3870 was (e.g. a new Radeon 5670 at under £60) or if you want to spend a bit more on a card that can do more (such as a 6850)

Edit: Sorry i seem to have mis-read your post slightly, you did indeed want something better than a 3870.
A Radeon 5770 is a fair upgrade at around £100, however I also have a 3870 (thankfully still working) and for me I plan to upgrade to a 6850 sometime in the next few months, as it will offer a significant and observable difference, at my game playing at 1920x1080 resolutions.

[Fishboy]

Cheers for the reply but I don't think I'm going to buy another ATI card, the 3870 was my first after a life time of Nvidia and I am quite disappointed it died after only 2 years.

Don't get me wrong it was a great card for the money (played bioshock and stalker at full tilt on 1028-1024 as well as arkem asylum and day of defeat) but it worked out to £40 a year which isn't good in my books as every Nvidia card a bought got ebayed after an upgrade.

thanks again

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

What PSU do you have??

Also,Nvidia or AMD do not make the cards themselves.

BTW,I have had an X1900GT,an HD3870 GDDR4 and an HD4830 and they are all still working fine. I bought my HD3870 when it was first released which is over 3 years ago.

OTH,my 8800GTS 512MB suddenly went kaput. Did I blame Nvidia?? No! It is not their fault and is probably more to do with the company which made the card. I could have just had a faulty card as other people have 8800GTS 512MB cards which still work fine.

I would definitely buy another Nvidia card as I have owned many cards from both companies and that was the only time I ever had a graphics card stop working so far.

In fact a lot of Nvidia laptop graphics cards based on the G84 and G86 GPUs failed prematurely due to bad bumps so don't think that a Nvidia card is necessarily any more reliable.

It lost Nvidia at least $200 million:

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=28505

[Fishboy]

Hey cat
You could be right there, the reason I bought the card (force 3D hd 3870) was because my machine has a AMD Phenom quad core CPU and I though an ATI card would prove more compatible.

Maybe I'll try another one from a different company as I said it was a great card for the price and maybe my system crashing had something to do with my card going kaput....lol

AS I mentioned earlier I'm the proud owner of a Zalman V770 VGA cooler which is good for the ATI 4650,4670,4850,4830.
Any one have any views on these cards???
and does anyone know if the RAM heat sinks can be used again as they are on my dead 3870

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

What PSU do you have and what is your budget??

[MSIC]

Those cards you suggested are all old now. Don't buy any of those.
Sell your zalman cooler on eBay whilst you can.

[Domestic_Ginger]

If possible; as stated above you can try for something a bit more powerful than the 4ks.

What does your v770 look like? The mounting holes have not changed alot on ATIs cards so it may fit a new card. Worth lookinginto if you want to keep it. What were the heatsinks attached using? If it was epoxy then you probably can't recover them, tape and you will be fine. You can but some more tape but replacing your cooler on your new will invalidate your warranty so not really worth it in my opinion.

[dfour]

You might be able to recover epoxy ones by freezing the card and then trying as its dead it doesnt matter if you wreck it.

A mentioned a 5770 would be a good upgrade but the 6850/6870 would be even better if you can afford (and youe psu can cope)

[Fishboy]

Hi All
Sorry for the late reply been away....

So my PSU is a case com model :ATX 500W. I've got nothing in the case apart from a couple of hard drives and a disc drive so I don't think power is a problem as I bought this to run my old 3870
As for price I don't want to spend more than £80 but might go a bit higher if its worth it.
I have been advised to get something with at least 1GB of ram.

As for the fan the heat sinks have been stuck on with tape so I think I'll cut them off repackage and ebay it.

Nice one all

[MSIC]

So my PSU is a case com model :ATX 500W. I've got nothing in the case apart from a couple of hard drives and a disc drive so I don't think power is a problem as I bought this to run my old 3870
As for price I don't want to spend more than £80 but might go a bit higher if its worth it.

The PSU you describe will be a poor quality one I think, and I personally would recommend getting a newer, better one.
However, in the real world we all have budgets and have to made judgement calls, and simply buying a new PSU wont improve your gaming experience in any way (but would keep what you have alive!).
As a temporary measure, consider your Case Com 500W to be a 350W and you might be fine.

Anyway, recommending a new graphics card is quite easy, as it comes to a choice of these two:
AMD Radeon 5750 £84.
Nvidia Geforce GTS 450 £88.

have been advised to get something with at least 1GB of ram.

I'm not certain that this is true, as the amount of memory on a card doesnt itself increase the ability (or rather, you need enough to ensure that what you are asking it to do doesnt get bottlenecked), however it's a moo point since they both have 1GB anyway

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Here is a comparison of the HD3870,HD5750 and GTS450:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3909/n...e-mainstream/5

The HD5750 consumes less power than an HD3870 at load and the GTS450 around the same amount of power:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3909/n...-mainstream/16

I would probably get the HD5750 as it could be possible that your HD3870 went kaput due to the PSU not being powerful enough. Over time PSUs will ouput less power as the internal components degrade and as more dust builds up in the PSU.

[Fishboy]

PSU issues eh....the case com was quite cheep but it had lots of great reviews. Is there a way of checking the true power output of a PSU???? and what do you recommend as a replacement

I still think the fan died and the card fried itself but it would be nice to cover all the bases before I fork out any more cash.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

This PSU is made by Seasonic and is decent quality:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/400w-...mm-fan-atx-12v

Here is a thread on the PSU:

http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-hardwa...-thoughts.html

I managed to get for around £34 by requesting that Scan put it on the Today Only web-page.

This PSU will also do the job:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/530w-...ail-atx12v-v23

It is not as good quality as the previous PSU IMHO but will still do the job.

I would check the following web pages to see if any items you want are on offer:

http://www.scan.co.uk/todayonly/index.aspx

http://www.scan.co.uk/shopoffers/index.aspx

Once you get to 20 posts you can get free postage from Scan too:

http://forums.hexus.net/scan-care-he...-delivery.html

[MSIC]

My apologies, id assumed 'case com' was a cheap brand as id never heard of them.
If you want to test if a PSU is working well try this:
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/xclio...chnical-people
It may be of limited value as it doesnt measure specific wattage delivery for example, but it checks (i think) some type of effective stable delivery on all the relevant voltage levels. I have one, it clearly told me when an old psu was buggered.
That all said, electrical talk is where im a bit out of my depth, compared to many here

Edit: although id probably caution you against buying this:
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/550w-...-hot-swappable
LOL

[Fishboy]

OK
After reading a few reviews I've come to the conclusion my PSU is old hat....but I got my multi meter out and all the power outs are with in 0.05V of what they say they should be so I'm stuck again??? I did monitor them for a few minutes each and they held true

Do PSU's realy make that much of a differance????? if I don't have to spend another £40 that would make me very happy.
As for cards I'm leaning towards the amd 5770 as I've had a minor wind fall but I'm assuming you'll tell me to upgrade my PSU....
so what do you recon??