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Nvidia card to replace 260 GTX

F

flenser

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 15, 2004
Messages
324
Hello,

My nvidia 260GTX is suddenly showing overheating symptoms and even in "dos" programs, getting video corruption. The fan is turning so I'm not sure what's wrong other than maybe it's time to replace the card as it is clearly not reliable at this point. Yes, I blew out the dust, and it didn't help.

Anyhow, assuming I end up having to replace the card, I need suggestions for a replacement card. Here are my considerations:

$250 or lower
Nvidia strongly preferred
"modern" (not 3 yrs old) but cool/quiet operation preferred over absolute performance

I don't play games very much but when I do, I need the game to run OK on a single 1920x1200 screen, not on multiple huge monitors.

So basically I'm looking for a decent bang for the buck nvidia card $250 or less that will run today's games ok without requiring huge amounts of cooling or power. SLI is out.

Oh yea, my cpu is a socket 775 Q9550 with 8GB ram and it's plenty fast for what I need so I'm not upgrading the cpu/mobo/ram anytime soon.

Thanks!
 
These 28nm chips this generation run very cool and quiet. Something in the AMD 7 series would fit the bill... but you want nVidia. So i would wait as long as you can for a cheaper nvidia 6 series card.
 
Are any of the 5xx series nvidia cards really 4xx series cards just re-branded? I want to avoid that.

I guess I should start a second thread on troubleshooting the existing card... According to speedfan it is 52C right after bootup and just keeps rising so even though the fan is spinning maybe it's not spinning fast enough anymore. It is an MSI card so maybe it has a warranty or something.
 
"cool/quiet operation preferred over absolute performance"
amd 7850 is quite the ticket for performance/quiet/low power at $250. The 7770 is also nice if you don't play a whole lot of stuff or dont mind running at lower settings.

Maybe get over the 'Nvidia only' thing?
 
My "nvidia only" thing is preference because basically I've tried ati/AMD cards 3 times in the last 10-15 years and each time pretty much got burned one way or another. I simply haven't had any problems with the nvidia cards other than after a few years they get old. Not sure why I haven't been satisfied with the ATI/AMD cards because although I "know" they are good, I can't seem to get them to work right or some little detail is wrong or the ONE program I need to use has a bug with the ATI drivers and won't be fixed because the new $500 version doesn't have the same bug, or whatever. Never had those problems with my nvidia cards but had them every time with my ATI cards. Yea it's weird but it's also consistent over several years trying them out.

I'm looking hard at the nvidia 560 TI cards. With rebates they're right at $200-$210 on the low end. Still, you're right at that price range the AMD cards are super competitive and arguably a better bargain... if I thought I'd be happy with them, that is. I've just had much better luck wearing out my nvidia cards. My old nvidia 4200TI lasted through 3 heatsink/fans before it was too slow to run anything, but that heatsink was super easy to swap out too. Never had an ATI card last anywhere near that long because of driver or application support halting long before the card was too slow to be useful.
 
I need to do something fairly soon though... gpu chip is 62C and climbing with nothing but the web browser open.

Maybe there is a gpu tuner program I can try to use to force the fan speed up...?
 
Oh and cool and quiet will have to wait for GTX 660/670, because card above uses twice power as your GTX 260 did lolz.

Fermi was not nicked 'thermi' for nothin you know.
 
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Yeah probably but just wanted to show just in case op was interested in benchmarks.

OP- another good thing, since you need a card right now, is EVGA lets you upgrade. So you can buy this $219 card now and play and later when power efficient models like 660/670 come, EVGA simply refunds your $219 towards new card.
 
Man, you got me thinking about getting two of those 448s to upgrade from my 5850's should be a nice boost on the cheap. It's nice to be unbiased, I always believed it was a good Idea to keep an open mind.
 
Read review. That $219 card beats $350 7870 in 5/6 games @ 1080p
 
Rauelius said:
Man, you got me thinking about getting two of those 448s to upgrade from my 5850's should be a nice boost on the cheap. It's nice to be unbiased, I always believed it was a good Idea to keep an open mind.
Click to expand...

If you're unbaised and have a mind to OC I'd go for 7850's. Will use half power, scale better and clock very high putting it on top.

7850's are highly underclocked and when you unleash them with asus tool they see 1200Mhz from 860Mhz almost universally. Many people get 45-50% overclocks. There it starts beating 7970.
 
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ZoNe said:
Read review. That $219 card beats $350 7870 in 5/6 games @ 1080p
Click to expand...

its a yester-year card that sounds like an outboard motor, the 7870 is still improving with driver updates, runs cool and quiet both and has loads more vram. Theres not even a reasonable argument here. The 7870 is forward looking, the 560ti is not. For what hes willing to spend, I'd still get the 7850 over anything.
 
Q1DM6 said:
Cram it right down. I was actually laughing at the "due to being 800Mhz" crap. But picking out one Nvidia-centric game to say this card can beat a 7870 in general is laughable. And really, you're going to crap talk me about making a joke in a thread in which a guy ruined his own video card by painting it, and baking it multiple times?
Click to expand...

Fair enough, but the way you said it sure made it sound troll-ish.
 
If your comfortable with taking it apart, I would disassemble the GTX260 and clean the heatsink/fan and redo the thermal paste on the video card. You could even test the fan while your at it.
 
Q1DM6 said:
its a yester-year card that sounds like an outboard motor, the 7870 is still improving with driver updates, runs cool and quiet both and has loads more vram. Theres not even a reasonable argument here. The 7870 is forward looking, the 560ti is not. For what hes willing to spend, I'd still get the 7850 over anything.
Click to expand...

Where are you getting noise figures?

FTW 448
wins price
wins performance
wins warranty
wins with upgrade
wins because he does not want AMD

Only thing it loses in in power consumption.

I'd get 7850 too but I'd put a waterblock on feed it 1.35V and beat 7970s - but he may not be doing that.

Out of the box FTW 448 smashes 7850 for less money.
 
JohnleMVP said:
If your comfortable with taking it apart, I would disassemble the GTX260 and clean the heatsink/fan and redo the thermal paste on the video card. You could even test the fan while your at it.
Click to expand...

I'd try canned air first if you haven't. While you're in there clean the CPU cooler too.
 
ZoNe said:
Where are you getting noise figures?

FTW 448
wins price
wins performance
wins warranty
wins with upgrade
wins because he does not want AMD

Only thing it loses in in power consumption.

I'd get 7850 too but I'd put a waterblock on feed it 1.35V and beat 7970s - but he may not be doing that.

Out of the box FTW 448 smashes 7850 for less money.
Click to expand...

Keep in mind temps and noise. The FTW 448 got to 88 degrees C in my PC (though it does have poor cooling) within a minute of running around a forest in ArmA 2. BF3 would push it to 85 C. That fan is very weak for the card.

Stuff to consider especially as he probably has an older case.

The Sapphire duel fan cards are nice in terms of cooling/noise. I have no idea how the EVGA classified duel fan cards compare.
 
Well make sure no dust is clogging the vents on the video card, but if you must buy a new card right now and you can't wait; then look for a 560 Ti 448 core. Should be able to get them for around $250. It's the best card to buy in that price range.
 
Like Skillz mentioned, if you have to buy now go with eVGA for Step-Up. Just remember that if you do want to step up eVGA's terms now require you to purchase an extended warranty first ($10-35 depending on MSRP of the card) if you do not have a lifetime warranty, and you have to buy the warranty within 30 days of purchase even though Step-Up is an option for 90 days. Oh, and if/when you do step up, that warranty does not transfer to the card you step up to. Not the most friendly policy anymore but it is at least better than the hit you'd take from selling it used when the lower end GTX 600 models do come out.

ZoNe said:
Yeah probably but just wanted to show just in case op was interested in benchmarks.

OP- another good thing, since you need a card right now, is EVGA lets you upgrade. So you can buy this $219 card now and play and later when power efficient models like 660/670 come, EVGA simply refunds your $219 towards new card.
Click to expand...
 
flenser said:
I need to do something fairly soon though... gpu chip is 62C and climbing with nothing but the web browser open.

Maybe there is a gpu tuner program I can try to use to force the fan speed up...?
Click to expand...

Did you try RivaTuner?
 
evga sure has changed. Seems like none of thier GTX 680 cards even have a lifetime warranty. Maybe <fermi was the last we will see of that. Step-up sounds a bit different as well. Oh well. I'll be looking at galaxy when 670s come if it has good performance/$. They have a rep here in forums that seems really cool and willing to push your card through even after warranty.
 
ZoNe said:
evga sure has changed. Seems like none of thier GTX 680 cards even have a lifetime warranty. Maybe <fermi was the last we will see of that. Step-up sounds a bit different as well. Oh well. I'll be looking at galaxy when 670s come if it has good performance/$. They have a rep here in forums that seems really cool and willing to push your card through even after warranty.
Click to expand...

Lifetime warranty is, honestly, a bit much. I don't expect a company to replace a product 10 years after I bought it. Most consumer electronics either become outdated or outright fail within 5 years anyway. It was probably getting a bit too expensive to keep supporting the lifetime warranties. I'm going to guess that a lot more people hung onto those eVGA cards (again, lifetime warranty combined with a replacement service that sometimes upgraded your card when needed because of lack of stock) than eVGA counted on. They did say a lot of the additional warranty options do not transfer to a second hand buyer with the new warranty terms...
 
night_2004 said:
Lifetime warranty is, honestly, a bit much. I don't expect a company to replace a product 10 years after I bought it. Most consumer electronics either become outdated or outright fail within 5 years anyway. It was probably getting a bit too expensive to keep supporting the lifetime warranties. I'm going to guess that a lot more people hung onto those eVGA cards (again, lifetime warranty combined with a replacement service that sometimes upgraded your card when needed because of lack of stock) than eVGA counted on. They did say a lot of the additional warranty options do not transfer to a second hand buyer with the new warranty terms...
Click to expand...

They could have kept it a 5 year warranty.
 
zandor said:
I'd try canned air first if you haven't. While you're in there clean the CPU cooler too.
Click to expand...

Yea. I thought about that, but it's still clean from my last dust-hunting expedition a few months ago. Both cpu and vid card are pretty clean.

The computer has been stable running with the side of the case off, so I'm leaning more towards either finding a replacement fan or seeing if MSI will RMA the card. I also updated the video card drivers (they were only one version old) and I'm not sure if that did anything or not.

I have noticed that the automatic fan profile keeps the fan at 40% until the card gets really toasty and then the fan speed still barely creeps up. I tested the fan by manually setting it to 100% and it got super loud so the fan is not dead. I tried the nvidia performance utility but there isn't really any quick and easy way to tell the driver to just add 10% to every temp in the "automatic" cooler profile. I'd have to make a bunch of rules to set trigger points to bump up the fan speed, not my idea of fun. The fan is very quiet at 40%, is loud enough that I notice it at 55%, and above 60% is annoying enough that I don't want to just set the fan speed up high and leave it there.

The top/back of the video card gets excessively warm, and there is no airflow back there. So maybe I'll be forced into a ghetto fan mod until the mid-level 6xx cards hit the street.
 
Skillz said:
Well make sure no dust is clogging the vents on the video card, but if you must buy a new card right now and you can't wait; then look for a 560 Ti 448 core. Should be able to get them for around $250. It's the best card to buy in that price range.
Click to expand...

Yes that seems to match what I've found so far. I'll probably pull the card out to write down the serial number and to try to really clean out the heatsink. Maybe I'll even pull the heatsink off and reapply some paste, depending on how hard it is to do that and if MSI says it's under warranty. I may have an extra 80mm fan I could zip-tie in there to direct more air at the card, or maybe do some ducting to get some more cool air to the card. I have an older lian-li pc-60 case so cooling is marginal by current standards. 2 80mm intake fans in the front, 1 rear 80mm and psu doing the exhaust work, and almost no help from the case design for cable management. Still, It's worked fine for years until the computer just started flaking out a few days ago.
 
winston9t4 said:
Did you try RivaTuner?
Click to expand...

Not yet. I got the nvidia control center performance utility which seems neat but isn't super user friendly as far as being able to bump up the fan speeds by just a little bit across the whole fan/temp profile.

With the side of the case off and nothing running but outlook and internet explorer, temps are stable a bit over 60C with the fan steady at 40%.
 
Regarding your purchasing decision, I'm in the same boat. I scored an open-box 260 with 216 stream processors for $137 shipped. I want to be in the sub-$150 price range from now on after pulling that off, I just think it's better use of money for products with rapid obsolescence.

(I've also learned to wait until package deals for A-list games with all DLC/Expansion packs come out for around $20, rather than paying $50 at launch and $20 per expansion--I'm behind the curve, but I'm making out like a bandit!)

So I know that I want a card with a lot more than 216 SPs if I want to get a healthy performance kick out of my upgrade. These days that means a 460 1GB, a 560, or a 560Ti. Even those cards are getting long in the tooth (in fact the 460 is pretty much gone), and you still can't get them in the low $100s. The graphics companies have found some way to put a concrete floor under pricing and it is driving me nuts. Hoping that the Kepler midrange cards will either be a better bargain or will finally force the other prices down.
 
I went from a GTX 260 to a GTX 560 ti 448 just a month ago and have been very pleased. I got mine for $215 AR so it should come in under budget.

Also, lifetime warranties are overrated. When was the last time you used a video card > 5 years?
 
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