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Cheap ATI card?

D

Daedro

Weaksauce
Joined
Apr 19, 2004
Messages
87
World of Warcraft players are experiencing severe fragments in-game. Worst than fragments, many different graphical glitches all over the place. Most of us are using nVidia Series 7 (I think) like 7900 GT, 7800 GS, etc. Running memory tests and we find out it's not a heat issues, the 2D memory on our cards is literally corrupt. (aka all images/textures/meshes).

Anyway, I know the new ATI Radeon X1950 CrossFire is the best on the market right now and the cheapest, but I read it has heat issues, driver issues, and it's new so I don't want to risk that. It could end up having the same problem as the 7800's. On top of that my CPU isn't that good so that would be a huge bottleneck, it's a 3200 AMD Athlon.

So I need an ATI that was good *value* around the time nVidia 7900 GT came out. Meaning a fair solid card that's not expensive. The 8800 GTX is crazy expensive. The old ATI x1900 XT are even more expensive.

Can anyone please help me out?
 
the x1950 is not new there are no heat issues or driver issues from what i have heard. a x1800xt should do you just fine and wont bottleneck your cpu.
 
The only x1800 XT I found was like $350, so expensive for an old card. Looks like most old ATI are expensive. Maybe it's just the XT, just like how nVidia GTX's are expensive. Found a cheaper XL and GTO, but still $250. What would be the next down ATI card? Something a bit older/cheaper.

Referring to this x1950, it's new isn't it? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814195025

Referring to reports of heat issues here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814195029

Tomshardware says it's the best card on the market.
 
The X1950XTX does not have heat issues. The X1950Pro, however, might if you stick with the stock cooler. (From what I've read on Newegg reviews... yes, I know they're not too reliable)

I think the X1950XT or X1950Pro will have your best price to performance ratio.
 
msg1285 said:
There are X1950pro cards out there that are under $200.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814127271

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102061

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=324623

If you go older you are looking at like a X800PE or X850pro but you will spend about the same as a X1950.
Click to expand...

Hey, thanks, that is what I was looking for. Looks like the x1950PRO is pretty cheap. Too bad I live in Canada so I can't get that great newegg deal. :(

I just found this, x1950 XT for only $275 CAD: http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=21571&vpn=100186L&manufacture=SAPPHIRE

That's better than the x1950PRO right? The x1950PRO on this same site is $220 CAD: http://www.ncix.com/products/index....1950PRO%20CF/HTDP/256M/A&manufacture=ASUS

There's also the x1950 GT which is cheaper: http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=22578&vpn=100199&manufacture=SAPPHIRE

Don't think I'll find any for under $200 that ship to Canada, *from* a warehouse in Canada. (If it crosses the border I get charged like $100).

So which one do I order? If the PRO is a knock-off of the XT/GT then I don't want it. I need a card that's stable, because I'm sticking with the stock fan/cooler. If the XT is just a little better version of the GT then I want the GT, it's cheaper.
 
IMO The pro is still a good card and a great deal. You can always look on ebay might find a good deal there.
 
That PRO says DRR3, but the other ones say GDDR3, what's the difference?
 
I dunno where you got your info on the X1950Pro, but it's all wrong. That card owns; it's quiet, and runs like a dream.

And they are all GDDR3 - that one article is just a misprint.
 
I didn't say the PRO was bad, I just asked if it was a knock-off. I read the reviews and the XT is completely different than the PRO, the PRO is a value deal compared to the XT. Reviews say PRO is still suppose to be a bit worse than the XT though. But I since ncix's cheapest XT is still more expensive than the PRO, and it's a Sapphire so it's stock cooler is supposedly not as good as the Asus (reviews) I'll go with the PRO.

I saw the charts, PRO is amazing good, especially for the price and it's suppose to consume less power than XT (which is good, less heat too I'd assume).

I'll get the Asus x1950PRO, thanks guys!
 
I think you'll be happy with the X1950Pro I built a system for a friend and we used it there. He went from a 9800 and is thrilled with it.

I've not looked up any bench's to verify it, but I'd think you are right that the pro should produce less heat then XT.

Good luck you'll be happy with the card
 
Your issue is incredibly general, I would guess several other things before the graphics card. The amount of flawed logic in this thread is overwhelming.

Your on the 7 series. Ok, lets work from there: what are the cards exact names? What specific graphic problem are you having? Is it possible to take a screen shot of the issue? If no, can you take a regular picture of your monitor while its experiencing the issue?

Daedro said:
the 2D memory on our cards is literally corrupt. (aka all images/textures/meshes).
Click to expand...
what leads you to believe this?

The game engine and minimaps are stored in system ram. Pre-caching allows the GPU to determine what textures it will need ahead of time, and as such it is bumped into the graphics card memory when it needs it. If your graphics card memory were truly currupt you would be seeing back shapes and yellow dots.

This is a hardware failure, very very very rare unless the card is modified by the user in some way. One person having this problem is not unheard of, but an entire group of WoW buddies is highly unlikely. However, if you are sure that this is your problem, and that there IS a hardware failure, don't buy a new graphics card, RMA (return defective for a new one) the one you currently have. If its a seven series card its more then likely covered by the board manufacturer. Common manufacturers are EVGA, BFG, Giga-byte, and PNY.

There was a couple month period where All Nvidia 7900 chips (G71s) coming off the lines would be considered defective, most companies ordered a recall of all the boards made during that time, but they couldn't track down all the end users. If you have a 7900 card, it is possible you have such an issue. Armed with this information they should allow you an RMA ticket no questions asked

If your machine is stock from a major OEM (like dell) contact them the same way you would the above companies: go the site, look for tech support, look for an RMA option. If none, look for an e-mail adress and request an RMA ticket.

To find the spicific name of your graphics card:
Start ---> Run "dxdiag" ---> display tab ---> "Name: [[your graphics card]]"
It is hard to determine by ordinary means who is the manufacturer of your graphics cards (if it is not from a major OEM like Dell or Alienware). Your best bet would be to take off the side pannel, and look for a sticker on your graphics card (which will more then likely be facing down).

A few terms:
Artifacting - Black shapes appearing where polygons should, can also linked to yellow dots showing up on floating points. Linked to over heating Graphics memory.
Tearing - Image split horizontally into two parts, fixing and re-tearing it's self every new frame. linked to V-sync and possible power deprivation.
Hangs - CPU queue full, and backlogged. Linked to old CPUs
Freezes - One program produces multiple threads and chokes the CPU. Cursor works, nothing else seems to. Linked to software conflicts and old CPUs.
Crash - Protection programs log an error, and shut the computer off automatically, Linked to over heating.
"Read error" (015122Ex2145021) Improper or corrupt caching/paging. Linked to toast Ram, or over heating.

A few things that just simply cant hurt:
Driver cleaner, remove graphics drivers accept for the ones applicable to your graphics card.
Update Direct X, get the newest (Direct X 9.0c) from Microsoft.com or Google it if your on a crack copy of XP.

When something doesn't work perfectly don't just go out and buy a new one.

As for the rest of the OPs post.

blegh... to lazy to explain, but please, take it from a veteran gamer, your cpu wont bottleneck.

I'm happy to help, if you have any urgent requests feel free to PM me.
 
x850xt. It's older, but if you have a 3200+... you myswell save some money and get one of the best value cards avaliable.
 
InorganicMatter said:
I dunno where you got your info on the X1950Pro, but it's all wrong. That card owns; it's quiet, and runs like a dream.

And they are all GDDR3 - that one article is just a misprint.
Click to expand...

I just got it, and it says DRR3 on the box, not GDRR3. What gives?
 
MrWizard6600 said:
Your issue is incredibly general, I would guess several other things before the graphics card. The amount of flawed logic in this thread is overwhelming.

Your on the 7 series. Ok, lets work from there: what are the cards exact names? What specific graphic problem are you having? Is it possible to take a screen shot of the issue? If no, can you take a regular picture of your monitor while its experiencing the issue?


what leads you to believe this?

The game engine and minimaps are stored in system ram. Pre-caching allows the GPU to determine what textures it will need ahead of time, and as such it is bumped into the graphics card memory when it needs it. If your graphics card memory were truly currupt you would be seeing back shapes and yellow dots.

This is a hardware failure, very very very rare unless the card is modified by the user in some way. One person having this problem is not unheard of, but an entire group of WoW buddies is highly unlikely. However, if you are sure that this is your problem, and that there IS a hardware failure, don't buy a new graphics card, RMA (return defective for a new one) the one you currently have. If its a seven series card its more then likely covered by the board manufacturer. Common manufacturers are EVGA, BFG, Giga-byte, and PNY.

There was a couple month period where All Nvidia 7900 chips (G71s) coming off the lines would be considered defective, most companies ordered a recall of all the boards made during that time, but they couldn't track down all the end users. If you have a 7900 card, it is possible you have such an issue. Armed with this information they should allow you an RMA ticket no questions asked

If your machine is stock from a major OEM (like dell) contact them the same way you would the above companies: go the site, look for tech support, look for an RMA option. If none, look for an e-mail adress and request an RMA ticket.

To find the spicific name of your graphics card:
Start ---> Run "dxdiag" ---> display tab ---> "Name: [[your graphics card]]"
It is hard to determine by ordinary means who is the manufacturer of your graphics cards (if it is not from a major OEM like Dell or Alienware). Your best bet would be to take off the side pannel, and look for a sticker on your graphics card (which will more then likely be facing down).

A few terms:
Artifacting - Black shapes appearing where polygons should, can also linked to yellow dots showing up on floating points. Linked to over heating Graphics memory.
Tearing - Image split horizontally into two parts, fixing and re-tearing it's self every new frame. linked to V-sync and possible power deprivation.
Hangs - CPU queue full, and backlogged. Linked to old CPUs
Freezes - One program produces multiple threads and chokes the CPU. Cursor works, nothing else seems to. Linked to software conflicts and old CPUs.
Crash - Protection programs log an error, and shut the computer off automatically, Linked to over heating.
"Read error" (015122Ex2145021) Improper or corrupt caching/paging. Linked to toast Ram, or over heating.

A few things that just simply cant hurt:
Driver cleaner, remove graphics drivers accept for the ones applicable to your graphics card.
Update Direct X, get the newest (Direct X 9.0c) from Microsoft.com or Google it if your on a crack copy of XP.

When something doesn't work perfectly don't just go out and buy a new one.

As for the rest of the OPs post.

blegh... to lazy to explain, but please, take it from a veteran gamer, your cpu wont bottleneck.

I'm happy to help, if you have any urgent requests feel free to PM me.
Click to expand...

It's an eVGA GeForce 7900 GT. I got it a week after it came out. I did not modify it in any way. It is defective. It's temp is always around 50c.

Topic on WoW forums: Blizzard vs Nvidia

It must have to do with the way they built the memory on series 7 cards. Perhaps it's easily corrupt and that's why we all experience problems. I was using a low-end PSU and could have broken the card with low voltage. Others could have broken theirs in a similar way. Only the series 7 were so easily breakable though. Even people with the newer 7950 GT have problems, so it's not a recall problem.

Anyway, right off the bat I've had fragments on it, lines from models in game that extend to infinity. Recently in their new expansion/patches it's gotten much worse. Either there are fragments all over the place, or the terrain texture has black lines all over it, patterned. GUI has black blocks on it in random places. Parts of my minimap are missing. At one point a rainbow of colored virus looking spots were all over the place, so I rolled back to older drivers. Getting fragments still.

Reasons it's memory: Alt+Tab will remove the fragments when you go back in-game, because it's a fresh display. If I load 2 WoW copies and my temp goes above 50c or my room is hot, the corruption gets worse and you can't even play because of millions of fragments. The reason Oblivion runs without problems and WoW does is because WoW uses a special pre-cache system so it's not reloading memory all the time like Oblivion does, where Oblivion doesn't get a chance to get corrupt memory like WoW does (loads it in memory till you leave the area). Some people report underclocking fixes it for a couple weeks temporarily, which would be because it's under less load, less temp I guess. Some report a fan against case fixes it temporarily, and a site in that topic says that is because it's helping temp and avoiding corruption or something. I ran a program in that topic that tests memory, and just like the others I reported thousands of corrupt memory in just a few seconds of testing. It's called BurnInTest. I started noticing red dots on WEBSITES, when i scroll down pages they're about 60% into the horizon of my page making a line down. When I load Windows theres about 3 dots on loading. When I get the millions of fragments problem in-game, on my desktop there are thousands of randomly colored dots.

It's just nVidia series 7, and some random old ATI cards. Meaning series 7 are easily corrupt, and some people have some old corrupt ATI's. But most are series 7. They must have fixed the memory problem with the 8800's.

Some believe it could be nVidia drivers, but we know it can't be WoW. WoW sure is using the series 7 cards in a way it can't handle, but it's nVidia's fault it can't handle the operations. The cards with these problems, corrupt memory, eventually die, and a game cannot kill a card.
 
If it doesn't work well I don't just go buy a new one. I've had problems with it for 8 months, but recently it has gotten worse.

Don't just assume I don't know what I'm talking about. THOUSANDS of people are having this problem with WoW, and we are all realizing it's a problem with the memory on the nVidia 7900 GT, or whichever you may have from that series.

I'm not going to post screenshots, if you want them visit one of the hundreds of threads in that forum I linked. 30 pages in that thread, closed, you'll find some.
 
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