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Thread: New graphics card or more cooling?

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    New graphics card or more cooling?

    So lately I'm having trouble playing my favorite game Civilization IV - it crashes once or twice per session that I play. I believe that my ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB is causing this, and I have read that this card is susceptible to overheating. I would love to buy a whole new PC with all the latest components but it isn't in my budget right now. I do have a ~$100 gift card to microcenter(dot)com so I can either buy a budget graphics card or more cooling for my 9800. Naturally I would prefer to get a new card but after reading Zak33's post in the thread titled "what difference does memory make" (the forum won't allow me to post the link since I have fewer than 5 posts) about memory and memory bus width I am worried that the new, budget cards won't be as good as my old 9800 because they typically have a 64-bit bus width whereas my 9800 has a 256-bit bus width.

    So.. I would love to have your input as to whether or not there is a card out there for ~$100 or less that would deliver equal or better performance than my 9800 OR would it be more worth my money to buy an additional fan for the 9800.

    Thank you for any input.

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    Re: New graphics card or more cooling?

    What's your full spec?

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    A shadowy flight. MSIC's Avatar
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    Re: New graphics card or more cooling?

    Ditto, we need to get an idea of the whole set-up, as any component is just one part of a wider whole.
    It's true that you'd want to avoid most graphics cards with 64-bit interfaces, however there are a load of graphics cards in your budget that would wipe the floor with a Radeon 9800 Pro, providing that your motherboard is able to take it.

    Edit: A very quick google search confirms that the Radeon 9800 Pro, whilst very good in its day (2003), will be very much out of date now-a-days. It also appears to be an AGP only card (please tell me if i'm wrong).
    Hexus review.

    If true, then your options are much more limited, and i couldnt really encourage buying a new AGP card unless you were very, very set on not upgrading your whole system.

    Additionally, you mention a budget of $100. Is this USD? (You're aware that Hexus is a UK site right?).
    NewEgg does sell this ATI 3650 for $78, which might fit the bill if money is very tight.
    It would not lose its head if temps or voltages are a concern presently.
    Last edited by MSIC; 09-03-2009 at 11:59 PM.
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    Re: New graphics card or more cooling?

    Full spec please.

    As MSIC as already said, it's AGP so new a card is probably not worth it, a cheap 2nd card would be better if you want something to get you running.
    However, full spec first.
    And check your psu, how are your current voltages looking? a dieing psu could be the issue.

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    Re: New graphics card or more cooling?

    Once again full spec

    But tbh the whole systeam is likely to be so old its not worth upgrading.

    Also as above cooling may not be the issue it could be your gfx,psu even ram.

    My advise would be throw $100 of your own in & buy a budget but updgradeable systeam

    eg :

    GIGABYTE GA-MA780G
    CORSAIR XMS2 2GB
    AMD Athlon 64 X2 7750

    Grand Total:* $179.97 newegg

    Of corse a new psu would be adviasbel but you could reuse your old one for a while.

    The above spec can be had in ether atx or Matx so u can reuse your old bits to save on cost.

    It will be faster in every way espically civ & yes a 780g onboard grapics will be much faster than your 9800.

    I myself play civ fine on my HTPC with a 780g

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    Re: New graphics card or more cooling?

    Quote Originally Posted by BGA View Post
    I am worried that the new, budget cards won't be as good as my old 9800 because they typically have a 64-bit bus width whereas my 9800 has a 256-bit bus width.
    The Radeon 9800 is about 3.5 generation old (depending on whether you consider the shift from the 2x-series to the 3x-series as a full generation). Something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102730 is easily more twice (big understatement) as powerful the 9800.

    Looking at various 3DMarks06 charts, the Radeon 3650 (itself half the speed of the 3850) outguns the Radeon 9800 by a decent margin despite having half the bus width. Depending on how old your system is, I wonder if it makes sense to go for the 3850 as it might be held back by he rest of the system.

    You are right that the 64bit 3450 card may not be much of an upgrade though. It's card to compare across different systems, but after looking through a few (as an example this: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/652/9/ with http://www.hwbot.org//listResults.do...erBlocked=true), I am under the impression that the 3450 is a little weaker as a card (lower SM 2.0 score), and the reason behind the higher overall 3DMarks on the 3450 review is due to the much more powerful CPU.

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    Re: New graphics card or more cooling?

    The HD3650 AGP is $110 from the company you have the gift card with:

    http://www.microcenter.com/single_pr...uct_id=0298243

    Not very cheap at all. However there maybe another issue though as some of the 9800 series card had the cooler literally glued on making it very difficult to remove.

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    Re: New graphics card or more cooling?

    AMD Athlon 3200+ processor
    Chaintech VNF3-250 motherboard
    Antec True 380S psu
    ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256mb gpu
    1 stick of 1GB DDR 333 RAM and 2x 256mb DDR 333 RAM


    Here is the voltage reading:

    img7.imageshack.us/img7/126/voltages(dot)jpg

    apologies, but the forum won't allow me to post url's (including images apparently) until I have 5 posts. In text:

    CPU Core: 1.52v
    DIMM: 2.56v
    +3.3v: 3.26v
    +5v: 4.87
    +12v: 11.84

    Obviously it is lagging a little bit, and my knowledge is lacking in this area, but those numbers from the PSU seem to be acceptable for a 5 year old unit. Let me know if I'm wrong.

    Yes, I am concerned that it could be the PSU but on the other hand I can hear the fan on my 9800 clicking and the heat sink gets so hot that you can't touch it.


    I actually bought and installed the Radeon HD3650 512MB last night and it was decidedly not as good as the 9800 Pro. While it has twice the RAM, it has fully half the memory bus width and half of the pixel pipes, and the memory clock is 800MHz vs the 9800's 700MHz - not much improvement. I played Civ 4 and the graphics were very choppy, and when I tried to run CoD modern warfare it crashed. I'll return it tomorrow.


    As MSIC as already said, it's AGP so new a card is probably not worth it, a cheap 2nd card would be better if you want something to get you running.
    Do you mean adding a 2nd card in tandem with the 9800? I have one AGP slot and 5 PCI slots.



    My advise would be throw $100 of your own in & buy a budget but updgradeable systeam

    eg :

    GIGABYTE GA-MA780G
    CORSAIR XMS2 2GB
    AMD Athlon 64 X2 7750
    Thanks for that list. I will consider doing that in a few months when I'll have a bigger budget for upgrading.


    The Radeon 9800 is about 3.5 generation old (depending on whether you consider the shift from the 2x-series to the 3x-series as a full generation). Something like this: ** is easily more twice (big understatement) as powerful the 9800.
    Thanks for the tip, but that card requires a 450W psu and mine is a 380W.



    However there maybe another issue though as some of the 9800 series card had the cooler literally glued on making it very difficult to remove.
    LOL, yes. While I had the card out I cleaned it thoroughly and I believe that the heat sink is glued on. The screws on the fan housing were on so tight that I couldn't remove them, but I was able to do a more thorough dusting and the heat sink seems to be a bit cooler now than before.



    Thank you all for the help. I think that for the time being I will get one of Antec's spot cooling fans and point it at the 9800's heat sink, and perhaps open one of the doors on the back of the case where a PCI card would be exposed to allow more airflow.

    Thanks again.
    Last edited by BGA; 11-03-2009 at 01:12 AM.

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    Re: New graphics card or more cooling?

    Quote Originally Posted by BGA View Post
    Thanks for the tip, but that card requires a 450W psu and mine is a 380W.
    To be honest, your PSU is most likely adequate.

    http://www.legitreviews.com/article/591/13/
    http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3151&p=11
    http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news...800-series.ars

    Note that those reviews measure system power consumption with the 3850 and not the card alone.

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    Re: New graphics card or more cooling?

    Quote Originally Posted by TooNice View Post
    To be honest, your PSU is most likely adequate.



    Note that those reviews measure system power consumption with the 3850 and not the card alone.
    Thank you for your input. Please tell me, if I have 380W psu and my graphics card is drawing 200W under load, does that mean that there is 180W left over for all of the other components or does it not work that way? Does it put out 380W to each component or are those 380W divided between the components?

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    Re: New graphics card or more cooling?

    Quote Originally Posted by BGA View Post
    I actually bought and installed the Radeon HD3650 512MB last night and it was decidedly not as good as the 9800 Pro. While it has twice the RAM, it has fully half the memory bus width and half of the pixel pipes, and the memory clock is 800MHz vs the 9800's 700MHz - not much improvement. I played Civ 4 and the graphics were very choppy, and when I tried to run CoD modern warfare it crashed. I'll return it tomorrow.
    I'm sorry that that is your experience, and i'm a little puzzled.
    I've done quite a bit of online research and the evidence suggests that the 3650 really is the better card.
    The tricky part is that i can't find anywhere that compares them back to back, however:
    A Radeon x1950 is in the region of 3 - 4 x better than a 9800.
    A 3650 wins some, loses some vs an x1950. Edit: Strike that, i think the 1950 is the better card of those two.

    Toms Hardware does has this quite vague list of graphics cards, and the 3650 is about 4 places above the 9800.

    I'm left to wonder if it's driver issues. Did you fully remove the previous drivers before installing the new card?

    By the way, the pixel pipes thing is not so clear cut, as the 3650 is a DX10 card and uses unified shaders rather than, er, the old sort. I'm not an expert on that, but i know it's not an apples to apples comparison.
    Additionally, each generation of cards undergoes architectural refinements so that the processors are able to do more with equivalent speeds etc.
    Last edited by MSIC; 11-03-2009 at 07:51 AM.
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    Re: New graphics card or more cooling?

    The HD3650 will be a faster card than an 9800 Pro especially in a game like COD4. I think it is a driver issue too!

    This is what I would do:
    1.) Uninstall the drivers and CCC entirely
    2.) Run Driver Cleaner Pro and Driver Sweeper to remove all fragments of the ATI drivers and CCC
    3.) Install the latest drivers for your card
    4.) Defrag the hard drive
    5.) Install CCleaner. I would run the cleaner first. Then I would scan for issues and fix them. I would also delete any startup entries for software you do not need anymore.
    6.) Install Spybot and remove any spyware on your system
    7.) Run your antivirus.

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    Re: New graphics card or more cooling?

    MSIC and Cat, thanks for those tips. I will try them soon when I have enough time to go through it all.

    But actually TooNice has me thinking... When I bought the 3650 I asked that if I returned it would it be put back on the gift card and he said that no, it would be paid in cash. So I could return the 3650 and get the 3850 from Newegg for a few bucks more.

    But then, if you look at MSIC's link to Tom's here: tomshardware.co.uk/Best-Graphics-Card,review-31363-6(dot)html it says that single core CPUs aren't powerful enough to fully utilize the 3850, so I wonder if it would even be worth it.

    I am still considering just returning the thing and waiting a few months and doing what PwnDirect suggested in a 7750 platform, but then that CPU is only 500MHz faster than my old 3200+.

    So many choices, etc...

    I wonder if I should 1)return the 3650 and get the same from newegg and save some cash possibly, 2) return the 3650 and get a 3850 from newegg, and possibly OC my cpu, or 3) return the 3650 and put off any purchase for a few months when I could afford a 7750 system.

    What would you do?

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    Re: New graphics card or more cooling?

    The better system as a whole, if that's a real option.
    In truth encouraging you to spend money now on an AGP card is not great value in the long term.
    I'd get a whole new system.
    Which is a shame itself in a way as the processor itself is not the main concern, it's the motherboard really, but to change the motherboard you'll need new RAM and a new CPU
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    Re: New graphics card or more cooling?

    Interesting.. I know that the motherboard is cheap, but what about it is the issue? (trying to expand my knowledge here)

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    Re: New graphics card or more cooling?

    Here is a review of it, which confirms what i also felt at the time that the nforce 3 chipset was good enough, and overall quite a solid buy (i built my brother a system about then too based on socket 754 Athlon 64 plus AGP).
    SO if there are left untouched and with no plan for upgrading, they are ok.

    The primary problem i'd say is the AGP slot - it was on the way out back then, and frankly short sighted i think of nvidia (or whichever manufacturer of the motherboard) to include it over PCI-Express, hence your current woes.
    It also has a single channel DDR controller, no big deal, but a shame none-the-less.
    THe other kicker for me is the 754 socket, which effectively ends any ideas of processor upgrade. It's true that the 939-based systems (which were coming around at that time) have also since faded away, but they had a longer lifespan which allowed some quite good dual core chips.
    I'd finally have to mention that quite a few people have problems with nvidia chipsets, although if you haven't then it's no negative point. Personally i could never get on with the build in firewall system (which caused me quite a few headaches at first), although i thought it was a neat idea.

    Now, i'm not saying that it was a bad buy (especially since i got a similar one ), and it has clearly lasted you for a few years, but a newer motherboard will be required if you really want a faster system.
    I'm commenting on an internet forum. Your facts hold no sway over me.
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