Ditched my Radeon X1650 Video Card

You didn't tried going to... I dunno.. somewhere where they can try to fix it? Maybe it was only cooler problem :smile:
 
No I didn't as it probably would have cost more than I paid for it on eBay, which wasn't very much anyway.
It was supposed to be new when I bought it, but I suspect it was used or reconditioned or something because several of the electronic components were bent over, the power coupling was very wobbly and loose and the little toggle thingy for switching between PAL/NTSC (TV) was missing so I could never use the TV-Out feature. (Not that I use it anyway!!). Also the fan was quite noisy.
All was not well with it, I know because at every boot I would get wild flashes going across the screen until Windows put in an appearance.
 
Phew... that sounds bad, I guess you did the right thing.

My ooooooold GeForce 2 MX/MX 400, 64MB Ram works even today!! And it's about 7 years old. Fan is VERY noisy but the card flys. I'm planing to install XP soon on that old computer, just for internet browsing in living room :smile:
 
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LOL, what's old is new again - to quote someone unknown.

This 9550 that I have in at the moment is great with Vista and doesn't even have a fan! I get Aero and Flip 3d etc. But I noticed with the higher end cards, I guess because they have more memory and processing capacity, that my Vista score went up from 3.1 to 4.2, it could be even higher with the x1950, I'll have to wait and see.
Also I have 4gb of RAM but Windows only "sees" 2858mb of it right now (that's a 32-bit Windows "problem" regarding memory over 2gb) but with the x1650 it saw 3453mb if I recall correctly.
 
Sounds like you had bad RAM on that old card - I had those screen flashes on my 9550 when I OC'd the RAM too much.

Peter, be careful with the Customs. The last time I ordered something that was manufactured in this country from overseas (ironically, it's cheaper that way) I was charged when I went to get it because the dumbasses didn't believe me when I told them it's from here in the first place.....
 
Ex_Brit said:
Also I have 4gb of RAM but Windows only "sees" 2858mb of it right now (that's a 32-bit Windows "problem" regarding memory over 2gb) but with the x1650 it saw 3453mb if I recall correctly.
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To the best of my knowledge, there is no real issue with > 2GB of memory, it's only at or above 4GB (depending on the brand of the memory and how Windows is feeling) that'll give you trouble.....

If you remove a stick (so that it's 3GB), does it see 3GB?
 
Haven't tried that but am advised not to try as the RAM sticks are paired. Maybe someone had OC'd that card to the point of self-destruct and then palmed it off on me, who knows?
I think the X1950 has the same DDR3 ram as the X1650 which is 512mb. Not sure, I'd have to look it up.
The memory thing isn't really bothering me as it seems that Windows uses the same percentage of it no matter what is in there.
 
Computer Guru said:
Sounds like you had bad RAM on that old card - I had those screen flashes on my 9550 when I OC'd the RAM too much.
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When I OC Graphic ram, my monitor burns :evil: haha, just kidding, this card I have has 64-bit ram, so if I OC it it hardly get more than 4-5% faster.. no use of OC-ing it.

I have Riva Tuner, by default my card is set to use OpenGL 1.3 even if it supports OpenGL 1.5, so I always have to override it to 1.5 if I play something "harder" :smile: I think Riva Tuner supports ATi cards too, but I'm not sure.

oc10.jpg
 
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Well I'm not interested in OC-ing anyway so really don't need it but I see it only has limited support for ATI cards anyway especially in Vista.
 
I don't put much stock by Windows OCing programs. BIOS and Firmware for me - I flashed my 9550 to more than double the GPU speed and almost double the RAM speeds, saving it to the hardware itself.

It's riskier, but much more reliable, bug-free (I haven't found a decent OC utility for Vista yet, even ATiTool BSODs too much), and gives better results.
 
I know a lot of people that don't mess with OCing, it's a big risk. Certainly once I get my 8800 I won't be OCing it for another year or two at the very least :smile:
 
Ex_Brit said:
Yes, but you are a computer genius compared to me. I wouldn't know how to do it....full stop.
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nahh just make sure you know what you want, and follow the words - cpu power - and pop it up and you'll have Grill in 10 secs - 1 minut :happy: rofl.

Computer Guru said:
I know a lot of people that don't mess with OCing, it's a big risk. Certainly once I get my 8800 I won't be OCing it for another year or two at the very least :smile:
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Yeah, you wont have a reason to do it... cause it's gonna fly anyways :evil:
 
YEah, that's what I keep telling myself.....

But this little voice in my head.... it keeps saying: "If you think it's going to fly before, wait till you see just how fast it can go with a little push. Just one teeny, tiny push - can't hurt, can it?"

But I heard that voice before! :lol:

"Oh come on now, one more tiny push... if the first one didn't hurt, this one definitely won't!"

"You wuss! Give it another!"

"What are you waiting for? Why is that thing not going past the 2million Hz mark yet! PUSH IT!!!"

"See, I told you not to do that! Now you have to go and get a new card!"


:x
 
Yeah, same me.:smile:

When I had my AMD Duron 1.2Ghz... and I was going around the BIOS and i found that little thingy "power control":evil: and it said value "100" and I made it "110"
when I came back to windows it was 1.3Ghz WOW all the games were running FASTER and all that... then I came back to BIOS and made it 115 and I got 1.35Ghz and it was working... then I started getting blue screen of death pretty often, that cost me one format and it was still NOT working, so I had to reset BIOS to default :x.

I would OC this AMD Athlon64 3000+ but there is no use cause my RAM works at 266Mhz :|.
 
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I OC my Video Card. But i also took steps to prevent problems before i took on the task. I got myself a big beefy fan for it before i even tried it to prevent any issues. I got myself the NVSilencer V5 for my 6800. I then used RivaTuner to OC from the 325/600 to 400/800 that i use now. So i dont OC much and i now have a card that doesnt break 50C when it used to be way over 100C.
 
Well i just knew that the stock fan wouldnt do. So i did some research and foud the NVSilenver. It was worth every penny. Even though for a while i couldnt OC in Vista. It still kept the card cool. Which is always good.
 
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