Graphics card woes - need a new one?

[AmishSlayer]

My 6800GT has been dying for a while now. The fan has all but stopped (it hasn't overheated just yet) and now that I found this nTune program from nvidia to monitor temperature and whatnot I've noticed something else.

My PCI-E Leadtek 6800GT is supposed to have a GPU Core speed of 350mhz and a GPU memory speed of 1000mhz. This monitoring software shows it's only running at 500mhz.

I figure this might be the source of all my crashes, lockups and surprisingly bad performance in some of my games that used to run just fine.

Anyways, I figure now might be the time to get a new card. I'm low on cash right now so I'm hoping to only spend $100-150 tops. Any recommendations?

 

[3ssence]

That 500mhz figure is double to get the 1000mhz as it's ddr - double data rate. Most monitoring programs show that half figure, rivatuner (which i use) does exactly the same. Nothing to worry about.

You could just replace the stock cooler with a third party item (zalman get my vote) and then overclock the card some, should get another 10-15 percent performance from that card if you do so.

But then again, maybe you are looking for a reason to get a new card...



I know i usually am !

 

[AmishSlayer]

Oh, cool.

I take it this would be a good card cooler?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835118117

 

[3ssence]

That would be great. My brother had one of those on his 6800GT and it did a good job. I would however recommend a newer version of that cooler for one particular reason:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835118001

My personal experience with the cooler you have posted (also had one on my x1800xt) is that it cools very well, but the mounting mechanism is flawed. It mounts in two opposite corners, and i found that on certain cards it was quite easy for the cooler once mounted to "topple" slightly and lose contact, you have to be really careful. The new revision mounts in all 4 corners, so provides a completely stable mounting mechanism that won't budge once put on.

I hope that is of some help.