Hi

I'm running a 1.8 MHz Pentium processor
512 MB SDRAM

I bought a Hercules 3D Prophet 4000XT 32 MB PCI card maybe 3 years ago as an upgrade from the bare-bones card that it came with. Trouble is, it's not nearly enough to run any decent game. I have a few EA games from like 2002 and it can't even really run them worth a shit.

I don't want to spend more than $100 on a card. I don't have a desire to play wacky crazy new games with ultra-intense graphics. I just want to do some franchise modes for Madden, etc. Any advice?

Does your computer have an AGP slot? If you look at the motherboard, it's the brown one...

Let's just say it does, I don't feel like opening it up. I'll take PCI and AGP suggestions

Firstly do check when you've got a spare few minutes as you don't want to buy the wrong card if you can help it.

Secondly, I'd recommend a GeForce 6200. Great card and it'll only cost you $60 on amazon. It'll certainly do everything you want it to.

Hope that helps!

I'd open it up before making a purchase, but I didn't feel like opening it at 2am yesterday

There might be a more appropriate thread, but this'll have to do. My computer shat a brick today, and the technical support guys tell me something something VRAM something something video card is dead. I understand the GPU is integrated into the motherboard, and replacing the whole thing would run ~$300. I bought the thing for $1400 less than 2 years ago and now its worth slighly more than $0. Does anything depreciate in value faster than a computer?

So are you looking for advice in replacing the parts or rebuilding anew?

If you could provide a little more information about your late computer I may be able to provide some counsel.

I'm just venting. I don't think the price of replacement is worth it.

How common is this issue?

The thing I'm pondering over is whether you could just purchase a video card and bypass using the IGP. If that could work it would be a cheaper alternative.

Specs:

Asus G1
Processor: ASUS G1 Intel® Core™2 Duo T7200 (2.0GHz)
RAM: 2048M DDR2 667
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForceGo 7700 GPU 512 MB

I thought the GPU was standalone, but according to tech support its soldered to the motherboard.

wait... you're talking about a laptop right?

I really don't have any advice for that then, sorry.

So... my friend is unconvinced that the GPU is dead, as the artifacts aren't apparent on all of the loading screens (for instnace, the manufacturer's logo seems to display okay).

Would my computer still run alright in safe mode if the video card was fried?

Well, I should say it DID run alright in safe mode until he did a disk check and now it doesn't.

This is a known problem in Nvidia cards I guess, at least with the 8 thousand series, and perhaps the 7 thousand series as well.

If I bitch enough, will I get a free component?

I remember the fuss over the 8 mobile series, but I believe the 7 was fine.

Who do you plan to complain to? Did you have any warranties in effect?

I thought I read some 7 series were effected as well, but apparently not mine. =(

The warranty is expired because for whatever reason, buying through big retailers reduces the warranty by a year. This I don't get. I'm not sure if they have this chipset in stock, so I might be SOL.