Question Need help with AMD Radeon R9 290X Card

[samajdar.inderjeet]

Hi everyone,

Have followed this site for a long time but this is going to be my first post.

So I have a custom built rig built 4 and a half years ago. I am a 3D/Graphic Designer and use 3d/2d softwares and also some casual gaming.

My graphic card is a AMD Radeon R9 290X Sapphire Tri-X OC Edition 4Gb. It worked well until this past Sunday. The display on my screen won't turn on although the CPU was running. Did a lot of research on what could be the problem and finally called a technician. He deduced that the HDMI port on my card was faulty and plugged in the cable to my onboard HDMI port. I asked him if the card will work with the DVI port and he said I would have to check it out with a DVI connector and VGA Cable. Otherwise I would have to buy a new card.

So guys is there any possibility that the DVI port might work, or do they all stop working simultaneously?

One more question, incase I have to buy a new card, I have selected Nvidia Zotac GTX 970 AMP Omega 4GB version. Is that an equivalent to my current card?

Cheers and sorry for the long post.

My rig is as follows :

I7-4790 3.6ghz

16 gb ddr5 ram

Asus Z97 D3h motherboard

 

[DSzymborski]

It's a possibility, it just depends on what failed. It's worth getting a cable to do this.

What is the exact PSU? If you've got a garbage PSU that possibly caused or hastened the death of your GPU, you'd want to replace that before getting a replacement GPU.

The 970 is in the same range as the 290x, but what's the price on that? It's a couple generations old now and if you're not getting new for under $180 or so, it's really hard to justify purchasing it over the better 1660, which starts around $210.

 

[samajdar.inderjeet]

Thank for the reply. I have Cooler Master V1000 PSU and tbh it has done a good job until now.

I can get a 970 for 170$ at amazon. Is it worth it? OR should I put in a few bucks more and go for the 1660?

 

[DSzymborski]

Whew, that is a top-notch power supply!

Honestly, I'd go for the 1660. It's straight-up a bump in processing power and having 6 GB of VRAM instead of the weird 3.5 GB + slow 0.5 GB will likely provide some benefit, especially at the later stages of their respective lives. I'd wager that you'd get an additional 18 months or so before you want an upgrade relative to the 970.

To me, that's worth $50. Just for me, I tend to buy a $400 GPU every three years, so I value an extra year at about $130. You can figure out if $50 is worth 12 months or 18 months or whatever in putting off an upgrade based on your personal buying habits.

 

[samajdar.inderjeet]

just a quick update...tried connecting my graphic card via the dvi-vga connector and it didn't either....bummer....guess I'll have to buy a new one at last.