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My PC's New Year resolution: stuff up more
Jan. 9th, 2010 07:11 pmI'd appreciate any graphics card advice!
I'd been doing my best to ignore random occasional lockups on my PC for some time, but as I was shouting at iMovie on Whitney's computer I finally heard a dreaded POST error beep from the other side of the wall. Coming back to a pair of blank monitors, I had to reset and listen to it a couple more times because my internal speaker is quite indistinct - at first I was terrified that it was dash-dot, as that means that the main board has gone, but seeing as my computer appeared to be correctly going through the motions of hard drive activity despite the monitors remaining resolutely blank, I'm pretty certain I'm actually hearing dash-dot-dot, which means it's just the graphics card which has gone on strike. That was definitely the pattern I heard when I listened to it closely after taking the case off.
I ripped it out and ordered a new one online - I trusted my instincts and got the Geforce 9400 GT, but when I suddenly remembered that I had an unbroken record of ordering graphics cards that were completely awful, I immediately got on the phone to cancel it again and seek advice from other people.
I'm not after anything madly expensive or indeed capable - the above card is a budget one at $50 but I'd be prepared to go up to about $100. Around my computer, I generally try to keep the fact that it's the 21st century quiet - I think the most stressful thing I ever ran on it was Portal. I just need something that's PCI Express (I have a 1.x slot but 2.0s are backwards compatible), capable of running two monitors and likely to last.
Any recommendations?
I'd been doing my best to ignore random occasional lockups on my PC for some time, but as I was shouting at iMovie on Whitney's computer I finally heard a dreaded POST error beep from the other side of the wall. Coming back to a pair of blank monitors, I had to reset and listen to it a couple more times because my internal speaker is quite indistinct - at first I was terrified that it was dash-dot, as that means that the main board has gone, but seeing as my computer appeared to be correctly going through the motions of hard drive activity despite the monitors remaining resolutely blank, I'm pretty certain I'm actually hearing dash-dot-dot, which means it's just the graphics card which has gone on strike. That was definitely the pattern I heard when I listened to it closely after taking the case off.
I ripped it out and ordered a new one online - I trusted my instincts and got the Geforce 9400 GT, but when I suddenly remembered that I had an unbroken record of ordering graphics cards that were completely awful, I immediately got on the phone to cancel it again and seek advice from other people.
I'm not after anything madly expensive or indeed capable - the above card is a budget one at $50 but I'd be prepared to go up to about $100. Around my computer, I generally try to keep the fact that it's the 21st century quiet - I think the most stressful thing I ever ran on it was Portal. I just need something that's PCI Express (I have a 1.x slot but 2.0s are backwards compatible), capable of running two monitors and likely to last.
Any recommendations?
