[Xelion]

I'm looking to fix/replace my graphics card only because the fans gonna give way any time soon. I've done some initial research and failed miserably. Firstly my graphics card is an Asus 9600XT/TVD 128MB. I have two options, replace the fan/heatsink with another fan/heatsink which I have no idea where to start, maybe someone in the community has had some experience with this sort of modding and can advise me best, secondly replace the graphics card which I'm more inclined to do since if I am going to spend money at least its for something much better.

Theres just one problem with this second option, the card needs to be AGP, be better than my current card, be an ATI chipset and have VIVO(Video In Video Out).

Any help would be much appreciated on the issue.

[CP5670]

What's your price range here?

[Polpolion]

The one with a name with the most numbers and letters is always the best.

[Xelion]

What's your price range here?

AU$200/$US170

The one with a name with the most numbers and letters is always the best.

They've all got long names these days

[Ransom]

You ought to be able to get a Radeon X1650 Pro for a little under $200 AU. Unfortunately it looks like none of them support video-in; for that you need to go to the X1950 which is closer to $300, and even then I could only find PCI-E cards with that feature. I didn't look especially hard, though.

http://www.auspcmarket.com.au/

[CP5670]

AU$200/$US170

The main cards you should look at are the 256MB X1950 Pro and X1950GT. They're respectively $160 and $140 (USD) here, although I'm not sure what the prices are like in Australia. The Pro has the Theater 200 chip that allows for VIVO and I'm pretty sure the GT does too. Some of the X1600s also have VIVO, but the standard configuration lacks it so it's up to card manufacturer whether to include it or not. The ones with it will probably say so somewhere in the item description.

[edit] never mind, it seems that the AGP versions of those cards are in the same situation as the X1600s and only a few have it. I think if you want a guaranteed VIVO chip in your price range, one option is to look for an old X850XT AGP on ebay. It's much slower than the X1950 cards, but you can probably get one very cheap and it will still be at least 3x as fast as your existing card.

[Bob-san]

How about a normal graphics card and a video-in card? Or an ATI All-In-Wonder (haven't seen a new one in forever, though). What are your system specs? If you are using a PGA478 motherboard, you can get an Asrock P4VM890...


Anyways for ATI cards, this is the first with VIVO. You need a PCI-Express board though.

[Cyker]

You'd have to look at ATI for VIVO.

The most powerful AGP VIVO card you can get with nVidia uses a 6600GT (I have one made by Gigabyte; It's good and has a gigantic heat-pipey heatsink with no fan, but only has 128MB RAM and is starting to be a bit slow by todays standard )

There was a rumor that someone made an AGP VIVO card based on the 7600GS (The last chip nVidia made that is available in AGP form) but I've never seen one and think it's a hoax...


If you can get an add-in PCI card for the VideoInput-part instead, that would be better since VIVO cards are generally tricky to find anyway and it'll always be a pain when you want to upgrade your card. Also it'll work if you ever move to a PCIe-based system.

I really wanted to do that but NONE of the vid-capture cards available support anything other than Windows XP (2k and '98 for liiiifffeee!!  ), and only the older ones have any usable Linux support

[CP5670]

Yeah, it's better to just get a separate video capture card so you don't need to restrict your choices here so much.

The Nvidia 7 and 8 series don't support a VIVO chip at all and the AMD X2 cards don't either, so none of those cards will have it.

[Xelion]

Obviously I'm going to have to go for a separate video capture card. So I'm open to any recommendations on X1600/1650 cards since they are priced around AU$200 here (Australia) and also any decent capture cards.

[Xelion]

A belated thanks to all for the help and recommendations

I decided in the end that getting a new graphics card would require a new power supply which bumped up the price excessively, especially since the card would have cost close to AU$200 and without VIVO I just wouldn't be happy. So I took the risker road and replaced the fan on the graphics card with a zalman vf700cu vga cooler.

I also picked up a new power supply (Zalman 360B-APS) since the fan on the old one was starting to get really noisy. All up I paid just under AU$120 for both.

Heres a pic of my graphics card, now with an extended life not to mention much cooler temperatures

[karajorma]

And I thought the running repair I did on my old R9800 pro (Replacing the fan with an old Athon 600 cooler fan) was crazy.

EDIT : How the hell is that thing attached anyway? I've been installing similar Zalmans recently and I can't see how that's not going to just drop off unless you drill holes in the board!

[Xelion]

And I thought the running repair I did on my old R9800 pro (Replacing the fan with an old Athon 600 cooler fan) was crazy.

I'm guessing that innovative solution worked well

How the hell is that thing attached anyway? I've been installing similar Zalmans recently and I can't see how that's not going to just drop off unless you drill holes in the board!

The asus heatsink used two holes that were originally on the board so thats all it used, although I did think at times that the Zalman cooler was a bit heavy and it might break off but it hasn't yet, which is good

Here are two pics prior to placing on the vga cooler

[karajorma]

Lucky that they were the right distance apart for the cooler.

As for my card, I didn't bother with any fancy ideas (like removing the heatsink). I simply bolted on the fan and hoped



It worked quite well until I got a bit hamfisted pushing it into place one time and broke it.

[Davros]

i did the same thing with my 4200ti kajorma took the fan from a pentium2

[Bob-san]

P2 fans are quite small and weak... howd ya get it to work?

[Davros]

the fan was a hell of a lot bigger than the gf4 fan
i just unscrewed the cover of the gf4 heatsink removed the fan and screwed the p2 fan onto it

[Herra Tohtori]

Heh. We should put up a MacGyver PC repair tips&tricks section...

Although I've only thus far replaced my CPU fan with one size bigger - it didn't really have appropriate holes for screws, so I made them. Also, the heat sink had these edges on the sides that were a tad bit too shallow... but they bent nicely outwards, and the new fan sat on it's place rather fine after that.

Also, I happened to have a grille on the PC's detachable side panel about on where the CPU heatsink was on the MOBO, so I cut a 1.5 litre Sprite bottle, duct taped it to the fan and added some duct tape to the other end so that the grilled side panel would meet it. So now my CPU fan sucks in fresh room temperatured air through the grille and the air duct, which means that my CPU heatsink gets room temperature air instead of case temperature air.

Zalman's VGA coolers seem to be rather fine, I've got one (namely VF-900 Cu) for my XFX GF7600GT (which is factory overclocked to 650/1600 MHz for core/memory), and it sometimes goes over 50 degrees celcius under heavy load. I've never seen it go past 60 degrees Celcius with this heatsink installed.

[CP5670]

Those CPU heatsinks can be quite powerful with old cards. One guy on another forum had gotten around a 500% overclock on an ATI 7500 by strapping an Opteron cooler on it. The coolers on modern cards are generally pretty good as they are though, so you won't see that sort of improvement there.

[Bob-san]

*runs off to strap a cheap CPU fan on my FX 5200* My card, at stock, runs at 250/400... I overclocked it without problems to 300/500. I'd say it's a decent overclock...