Virus or Graphics card?

[Killua110]

Im reallllly DESPERATE for your help.

I have an Ati Radeon 9800 pro 128mb. I've had it for two years but this is the situation:

my pc has been acting wierd lately gettign all these lines down it like bars of yellow vertically. or aqua.

It would soon disappear if i pushed my graphics card to the right with my finger somehow they disappeared. It became more frequent and then my graphics card seriously messed up when open call of duty during these lines were on. Went to connect to a map and it completely froxze and like ghrey and black squares. So i quickly shut down and restarted but nothing was coming up on my screen.

So i had to sort out the card and everything like push it to the left or right. until the monitor turned blue light meaning it was connect and loading a pic but it was still yellow meaning monitor on savign energy mode.
In the end it worked and had been able to use my comp but today when the lines were showing up.
I tried pushing to so the liens would disappear sudennly monitor goes blank. whjen i nudge into right positioning its like the messe dup pic of my desktop.

So restarted but found nothing on monitor. It would be on and then after a while nothing would show up and it would turn it self in to saving power mode.
While trying to readjust positioning all day because it worked b4 it does not work still.
then two parts of graphics card fell off.
If i had a diag i could show you but on the top left side two pieces identical have bronze wire twirled around it. those two tpieces stick out
I touched them and they easily fell off.

Can you give me any idea on wht to do???

Is it my graphics card or is it a virus or is it my monitor?

really really desperate
plzzzzz

[jmarius]

Sounds like it's X-mas for you. Next time you put a card in, leave it there and push it left and right. You might need a whole new motherboard.

[bob]

Okay, think about this... parts of your graphics card fell off. Well, they were on there for a reason and, unfortunately the reason was to make it work. Forget viruses - you need a new card. Don't keep playing with it or you'll probably damage your motherboard and be out more money. If you're looking to use Fedora, I'd strongly advise you to switch over to Nvidia's cards next time though - much more compatible.

[Snow]

The good news is that you can get an nvidia based card...and decent linux drivers to go with it :)

[Killua110]

...T>T

wht do u guys suggest which graphics card i should get???
Under 50 pounds?
I've got a shuttle and amd 64 bit athlong processor
Oh man wht a waste....

[bob]

Start checking for rebates and specials - there's always sites or stores that have them. You can read all the reviews, but I wouldn't go too high. There was an article in either PC Mag or PC World recently (this month I think) on sub-$100 cards that did very well.

Edit: Here's the article I was thinking of: http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,124588,00.asp These are PCIE cards, but similar ones in AGP are probably out there and may even be a bit cheaper.

[Snow]

I believe the 6600 cards should be around that amount by now

[Killua110]

Wo thtnks for the help guys i really appreciate it!

but seeing the 6600 can it play games to a good standard? high medium or low???

Also anyone know where this is cheap in the uk because ^>^'? the currency


edit:
is this any good?
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=99557

As long as i can play games to a medium then its ok after seeing the price of the 6600 gt on ebuyer its pretty expensive!
Im still trying to find a better one.

[jmarius]

You'll have to search online for good prices. The card is very good. In the US AGP runs for about $130 and PCI-E for about $120 (online). Some stores will have rebates, which will drop the price if you can wait for the rebate. I have a feeling things are slightly pricier in the UK.

[Wishartz]

Try http://www.ebuyer.com it's the cheapest in the UK I know for hardware.

Thats where I always get my stuff from.

[Wishartz]

whoops youve already given a link to a product on ebuyers site. lol. Missed that.

[Killua110]

lol i added it just recently

Yes i need an AGP all i undderstand is its got three gaps in the place you connect it to the motherboard if thts true then its correct.

rebates? how long do you think one will take place? Im using thsi really slow computer and fidning it very hard to surf the internet a bit faster.

ill search micro direct :( but i think its going to be expensive.

[Killua110]

really sorry for double posting!!

but i found three geforce 6600s at a reasonable price......

70 pounds!!!!

http://www.goto.dealtime.co.uk/xPC-Verto_GeForce_6600_128_MB

http://www.lowestonweb.com/products/displayinfomain.asp?e=C47796AC-A83F-41F4-8E98-9A1097D6FEBB&td=1

http://www.goto.dealtime.co.uk/xPC-Gigabyte_6600_NV43_300_550MHz_256MB_128bit_DVI_TV_ Out

these are all 6600 and esitmated 70

Can you guys tell me which is better one?
or you recommend other lower priced ones or radeon cards???

plz help thanks!!!


i foudn this radeon

http://www.goto.dealtime.co.uk/xPO-Sapphire_RADEON_9600_XT_Atlantis_Graphics_adapter_ RADEON_9600_XT_AGP_8x_256_MB_TV_out

same price as the geforces can u plz see?


edit: another one

http://www.goto.dealtime.co.uk/xPO-ATI_Sapphire_ATI_Radeon_9600_Pro_256MB_DDR_AGP_DVI _TV_out_Retail

can u tell me about 9600s? its reasonable priced and maybe the one i m aiming but can it play games to good standard high medium or low?


i need my comp up as fast as possible to do alot of my work!!! T>T

[Crux]

Those 'things' are noise inductors. That is why you get the noise bars. Far as 'moving' your card around? Well, I'll not beat you up anymore than you have done to yourself.

Anyrate... I got a ATI; yeah I am an nVidia guy also but it was for the children, and it took some tweaking to get 'er to run. However, GLX gears out was almost thrice of my nVidia card.
-OUCH-!! Just sharing guys, don't beat me. LOL!!

Old nVidia card was a 5500 FX, new ATI is a 9550. As stated though, PRICE was my issue, so if you can fork a few extra pounds then go with nVidia. NOT saying nVidia is more money than ATI; normally it's the reverse, but this card was a steal.

I woulda if I coulda.

[Killua110]

noise inductors T>T don't remind me!

so in the links can you deduce which one is better??? is the ati better than the 6600???

i dont know much about graphics cards really :(

[Killua110]

ok scrap the links!!!

My budget is 50 or lower T>T nothing more!

Can you guys reply plzzz and tell me!

is Hightech ATI Radeon 9550 256MB TV-Out DVI Twin View AGP better than
Sapphire ATI Radeon 9550 128MB AGP8X Graphic Card with DVI & TV-Out Lite Retail

I dunno....because the hightech has 256mb but doesnt have agp which does something? so is going with sapphire the best option???

i didnt choose nvidia because they were priced above 50# apart fromt he fx5200 which i read was really not as good to run games.

and then
WIll highend games like bttlefiled 2 or something run on the two graphics card???

[jmarius]

They're both AGP, it's just that one has double the memory (there's not outrageous difference between 4x and 8x). Sometimes it depends what kind of memory they have on it. Check to see if there are reviews on them. 128MB will do it for that game and many others. As for drivers, livna has been good about keeping up with both nvidia and ati. That shouldn't be an issue in fedora (apart from the original fc5 kernel).

[saywot]

Sometimes it depends what kind of memory they have on it. Check to see if there are reviews on them. 128MB will do it for that game and many others. As for drivers, livna has been good about keeping up with both nvidia and ati. That shouldn't be an issue in fedora (apart from the original fc5 kernel).

In a rush of blood to the head I purchased a Sapphire Radeon 9550 256mb AGP card (it was cheap). After installing on this FC6 machine I had to tweak the resolution and re-set the monitor, But I noticed when I was looking through the 'available' list in the Applications - add/remove software drop-down menu that there was proprietary ATI graphics drivers available.

I have the ATI Radeon graphics card selected in the System-Administration-Display-Hardware but from the little information available in the cards 'Quick-Start guide' it would appear that the base graphics memory is 128MB and you, 'ahem', er, overclock the graphics RAM up to 256. but I'm pretty sure that software acceleration of graphics memory isn't an option provided by Wine but maybe the use of the proprietary drivers in the repository may be a step in the right direction.

But it's working OK thus far but, I'd like to see a bit better performance with double the RAM and a newer GPU than I had with the older (original) Sapphire card

[leigh123linux]

In a rush of blood to the head I purchased a Sapphire Radeon 9550 256mb AGP card (it was cheap). After installing on this FC6 machine I had to tweak the resolution and re-set the monitor, But I noticed when I was looking through the 'available' list in the Applications - add/remove software drop-down menu that there was proprietary ATI graphics drivers available.

I have the ATI Radeon graphics card selected in the System-Administration-Display-Hardware but from the little information available in the cards 'Quick-Start guide' it would appear that the base graphics memory is 128MB and you, 'ahem', er, overclock the graphics RAM up to 256. but I'm pretty sure that software acceleration of graphics memory isn't an option provided by Wine but maybe the use of the proprietary drivers in the repository may be a step in the right direction.

But it's working OK thus far but, I'd like to see a bit better performance with double the RAM and a newer GPU than I had with the older (original) Sapphire card

You wont get many answers posting to the end of a dead post