1) Has GeForce 8600GT bit the dust? 2) Upgrade suggestions?

ljnovotny

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Abit AN8 32X
AMD 64 AthlonX2
Nvidia 8600gt 512MB
2 x PCI Express x16 (two full-bandwidth 16-lane PCI Express)
2 x PCI Express x1
2 x PCI slots
2GB Dual DDR 400 (1024x2)
500W power supply
500GB WD HDD EIDE
Windows XP Pro
NIKO 26" TFT LCD TV

Hey -
I'm suddenly getting no video input and having monitor go to sleep (plus return to mode)on boot; system appears to be booting normally (single beep at beginning, reading disk drives, etc.) but no video input to monitor. Same on different monitor. Happened before but fixed itself (I thought tightening RAM was the reason) but I could get it to come on if I put monitor mode to DVI at exact time as power up; now nothing but very quickly going into sleep mode. I have noticed some wiggly screen action for about 10 seconds upon a cold startup.
Is my card shot?
And if so, can anyone recommend something comparable for this build? I would be so grateful as I am really strapped for time to research at this time.
Thanks a million,
Laura
 

theAnimal

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Can you try the card in another PC? It does sound like that is the problem.

Also reconnect all cables and re-seat all RAM and cards.

As for a replacement, HD 4670 would be a good choice.
 

ljnovotny

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Thank you for your reply - unfortunately, my other computers only have pci/avg slots, so no way to check for sure. And I'll tear this puppy apart (again) and post.

Good suggestion for replacement ... can my system handle an upgrade?

Also, I was unable to do a clean install of Vista on new HDD - could that have been because of my build/bios?
 
Test your monitor on another system. If you're monitor won't work right, try a different cable. If the monitor is fine, then get another video card ^_^. You may have gotten one of those 8600GTs before the soldering fix, and thus it crapped itself out. A 4670 will be a huge improvement so I'd go with that, but since you have an SLI board if you really wanted to go with something from nVidia then you could get a 9500GT, which is slightly better than the 8600GT while far worse than the Radeon 4670, or you can spend more to get a faster 9600GSO or 9600GT.

At least with the 9600GT you can always SLI it. There is no point now in SLI for the 9500GT, since a single Radeon 4670 or an nVidia 9600GT would wipe the floor with two 9500GTs in SLI.
 
Well +1 for the 4670...
But I feel that going with a 4830 would be better...On that screen, you may not be able to turn on all the eye-candies with a 4670 but the 4830 would be able to handle it well...
And the 4830 is available for about $90 and the 500W PSU that you have can easily handle the 4830...
 

bustapr

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Well the same thing happened to my card. the monitor went to sleep mode and the pc activated the onboard video by itself. They told me it was fried. So I would also have to recomend the 4670 because its cheap, good and not powerhungry.
 

average joe

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I had a similar problem one time and I thought my video card was possbly bad. It turned out that my LCD Monitor has some wierd autodetect system which was supposed to tell it which input was in use. It did some kind of polling and could never figure out what interface I was using. The monitor would got into a sleep cycle once it failed to properly detect DVI. I had intended to use the monitor for my PC and as an HD TV by switching inputs. If I got it working and stopped switching inputs it would work just fine. I switched from DVI to VGA using an adapter and it worked just fine. Later after several tries I got DVI working again and never tried to use it for anything else. I think powering it off for several minutes and then powering it on after the pc was up and running did the trick.
 

RazberyBandit

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If your power supply can run it, the 9600GT would get my vote. Performance gain for the price is excellent. Also, you won't have to worry about any driver change like you would with an ATI card, and because you're on an nVIDIA SLI motherboard. If you eventually decide that a single 9600GT is too slow, you can always slap a second one in there and enable SLI.

For me, it's a matter of sticking to the technology (SLI or CrossFire) my motherboard supports.
 

theAnimal

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The resolution is only 1280x768.