I need a new video card. Tonight. How's this?

Drez

Hey all.

Long story short, I was given a 6600 duo core blah blah blah with 4 gigs of 1066-mhz ram and so on.

All I am missing is a PCI-E video card and a

I'll eventually go all out with some cool high-end SLI cards but for now I want something that will tie me over. I'm not necessarily expecting to play Crysis at full res, but I would like to upgrade from my current Athlon XP 2500+ and Radeon 800XT or XL or XXL or whatever the fuck it is.

So I'm looking around and found this:

http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/nVidia-by-EVGA-e-GeForce-8600-GT-1GB-Graphics-Card-01G-P2-N795-TR/sem/rpsm/context/99625632/oid/218961/rpem/ccd/productDetail.do

Is this essentially throwing money away, or would it be a good stopover purchase?

Daedalus

Everything in the GeForce 8600 series is terrible. Anything purchased from Circuit City (or Best Buy, for that matter) will be hideously overpriced.

How much money are you working with? The Radeon HD4850 is a really good deal right now, but it costs twice what that card does.

.kbf?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130334

or

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500006

Daedalus

.kbf? wrote: »

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130334

or

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500006

If you have a little more money, this will get you a lot more performance:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161235

Transparent

Where do you live? Is there a PC Club or something similar close to you? You're more likely to get a decent part quickly from them. Honestly spending a little more for a radeon 4850 or at least a Geforce 9600 is worth it.

Drez

Er, thanks all, but I had a gift certificate to Circuit City - shoulda mentioned that. Plus I really needed to get something up and running no later than today so I couldn't really wait.

I am having trouble now, though, if anyone can help. I made an H/A thread here, but I'll quote the content of the OP here as well. Any suggestions you have would be most welcome:

Drez wrote: »

Last night (read: this morning, until 4AM) I put together a new machine.

This included a motherboard, RAM, chip, water cooling system, hard drive, and power supply/case that were all functioning prior to my building the computer. These items were sold to me by a family member who purchased new equipment. And before anyone gets conspiratorial, this family member lives with me and I witnessed all these parts functioning correctly prior to the items becoming mine.

The only new item is the video card. However I do not thing the video card is bad. I think I'm missing something.

Obviously I cannot try anything from here, but maybe you guys can give me some ideas to work on when I get home tonight.

This is what happens:

PSU toggled on: Some lights come on on the motherboard
Power Button on case pushed in: Motherboard lights up like a Christmas tree, fans start whirring, no video comes on, and HDD starts clicking rapidly

Things I know are wrong or things I've tried:

- First off, I couldn't figure out all the front panel connections (power switch, power LED, reset switch, HDD led) this morning because I (a) didn't have a computer to look the stuff up on and (b) couldn't find the motherboard manual. Should this matter? I had the power switch connector in and that definitely powered up the PC. Would the motherboard fail to continue just because I don't have the other stuff plugged in?

- I removed the video card and reseated it. It was level and on this motherboard locks into place. So I definitely put that in the right way.

- I unplugged the HDD. The clicking went away, but still no video. But I should get video even without an HDD, right? I mean having no HDD shouldn't prevent a machine from booting up into BIOS and whatnot.

- Yes, the PC is plugged in.

Any thoughts?