StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Hi, some of you may know who I am, some may not, either way I ask for your opinion.

Last night I was on my computer, whilst playing WoW I hear what can only be called a snap or a pop. After checking my computer for any signs of burns, I noticed that my fan on my graphics card stopped and caused the card to overheat. I don't know this for sure though. I then continued to see if anything was wrong with performance. I noticed that occasionally the screen would freeze for a little while and then would eventually almost catch back up . This would continue and make any game literally unplayable.

So is it the video card that is the problem? Please help and thankyou for your opinions.

Anybody have any sort of ideas?

Sounds like your card's most likely fried. A popping noise and overheating are usually bad things.

If the card is still working after making the snap\popping noises then it may have been the fan suffereing from catastophic failure. It's probably worth trying a new fan or heatsink\fan combo as an interim fix but it's also worth thinking about a new card in the not to distant future.

I suppose bottom line is how much spare cash you've got

Yeah I was also thinking of trying a new heatsink on it since it seemed like it was still slightly operational. How much do heatsinks/fans go for for video cards?

Yeah, I've been eyeing up a Radeon 9800 pro 128mb for $139. I would moving to that from my Geforce 4 TI 4200 128MB.

Thanks for the input.

Perhaps you have destroyed your card by trying to use it without a working fan.
To be honest, I cannot understand why you have tried this. I once had a 9800PRO, too, and this thing was quite hot while running even with the fan on.

Nevertheless, you usually get a new fan from your graphics card manufactor. Abit once gave me a fan for my GF3ti200 for free, even though the warranty had run out.

See I had no idea the fan wasn't working until it had already happened, the fan works if I mess with it for a while, but I think it was too late anyways. No, I am not stupid enough to go "oh well... the fan on the graphics card isn't running, maybe it'll be ok"