GF4 not goodness...

[slovach]

On a 3yr or so old Dell my GF4 doesnt seem to be doing so well. I opened my case before and blew out some dust. (im out of a can 'o air so i tried to get some out with the good old lungs.) A decent ammount of dust kicked up in my face, which of course, cant be good but being as I was compressed airless, I couldent get too much out. Im afraid im going to hurt my computer but there was dust kinda like... stuck onto the card which I couldent just blow off. (atleast at the angle i was at...) I unplugged the card and I wanted to try to take it out. I gave it some mild tugs and it didnt really want to come out. So I tried to blow some more dust off of it and I closed the case and started up again. My computer is still alive but im worried the dust might be making my card too hot. Sometimes I get like flickers of polygons in World of Warcraft for like a split second. Would this card be latched in or screwed somehow by some Dell "we dont want you touching this" thing? Im just afriad of hurting it somehow, I didnt really pull hard at on it.

This also seems to be happening just in WoW. I was playing CS:S before fine. Help me with this somebody. Im just taking a guess that it's getting too hot in games / cant get enough air with all that garbage. Would I have to take it out to blast it with some nice air?

(ps: whats with neweggs shipping costs? i was going to buy some new teflon tape for my mouse, which is a small little sheet. It's like 8$ shipping like 4-5. But every time I add a new one, the shipping jumps up another 4-5$. That cant be right...

 

[CCUABIDExORxDIE]

shipping from the egg, for a limited time, is 99 cents or free on ANYTHING. if your gonna buy anything, make your move now.

 

[geekcomputing]

just get a can of air from walmart.

a thin layer of dust on your card is really not going to make much difference in temps.

if you want more performance i suggest you buy a 6600gt as they are mighty fast.

 

[CCUABIDExORxDIE]

i totally agree. my 6600gt is a prime performer and is getting me 21K+ 3d marks in 3dmark01 SE with some minor tweaks.

 

[Goat]

shipping from the egg, for a limited time, is 99 cents or free on ANYTHING. if your gonna buy anything, make your move now.

that's only really worth it on speakers, cases or monitors.

anyway, on some motherboards, there's a little mechanism that holds the agp card in place. See if there's something like that. make sure you took the screw out too

 

[CCUABIDExORxDIE]

look at some case fans and like small accesories like ratpadz or like as5, they have 5 dollar shipping for one item. the 99 cent shipping saves you lots of cash

 

[Patman]

shipping from the egg, for a limited time, is 99 cents or free on ANYTHING. if your gonna buy anything, make your move now.

I monitor prices on any future 3 months or past 3 months purchases on products. For the most part they jacked the prices to compensate shipping. Except my RAM which fluxes pretty bad anyways. But 99 cents shipping is worthless when Raptors are 187 with 99cent shipping vs the 176 with 4.99 shipping. Cases by antec also jumped. Savings arent seen here, no rush.

 

[Scali]

i totally agree. my 6600gt is a prime performer and is getting me 21K+ 3d marks in 3dmark01 SE with some minor tweaks.

That always makes me chuckle... People buying the most advanced hardware, and then running horribly outdated software on it. 3DMark01SE is not exactly going to give you a good idea of what this card is capable of
Reminds me of this guy who ran Windows 95 on his brand new P4...

 

[Sly]

that's only really worth it on speakers, cases or monitors.

anyway, on some motherboards, there's a little mechanism that holds the agp card in place. See if there's something like that. make sure you took the screw out too

Yup, it's probably the little lever at the end of the AGP slot. It's at the end closest to your memory sticks. Unhook it, and the card will slide right off.