Video Card Q and A

[daybreak]

The fan atop the heatsink of my ATI Radeon 9000 Pro is beginning to conk out, so I had to swap it out for my old, and I mean old, Nvidia Vanta AGP card with only 16mb of ram! It's a trooper though. Anyhow, I'm considering purchasing an ATI 9800 Pro. They're relatively cheap now, and I suspect it's because you can barbeque with them, especially the Sapphire models, which is what I'm currently looking at. The solution? I'm looking at the Thermaltake Crystal Orb...

 

Question1: Any 9800 Pro owners out there? What have been your experiences with the card?

 

Question2: Anyone ever swapped out the stock heatsink of a video card? (Especially if the stock heatsink was originally attached with an adhesive...)

 

[Eliteone]

I use Nvidia FX-5900 presently

 

 

and to number 2 yes. Most problems with video cards start with a GPU fan failure so replacing the fan can extend the use of the card.

[Old Salt]

 

daybreak,

 

Go to newegg.com and read the reviews for the Radeon 9800 Pro. Then click

on the manufacturers site and read their forums. You'll find there are A LOT of

complaints about the cooler and overheating! Since you will be replacing the

cooler ($35 - $40) you might as well get a comparably priced card. I bought

the GeForce 6600 256 Mb from Asus. It has the Nvidea chipset which NOLF &

F.E.A.R. recommend. Also I read in a post by Seymour at TGF that the Radeon

9000 series will not be manufactured after the year end holidays. Thus the

discounted prices. I'd rather have a card whose support will be around for a

while, besides if you remove their cooler you void the warrenty. Check the

threads under PC Tech Talk at TGF! Good luck!

[daybreak]

I'm fully aware of the problems the 9800 pros have with heat and I'm a huge fan of New Egg! We're definitely on the same page. Actually, I'm attempting to figure out when I'm going to build a new computer. If I were to do so today, I'd definitely buy a 6600Gt, but in the meantime, the 9800 pro is AGP, which is what I currently have, and it's only 127 bucks OEM. No matter what, I will replace the stock heatsink on the 9800 Pro, that's not even debatable. I just wanted to get some feedback from people who have done so already, or people who own the card to get a sense of the failure rates. The Thermaltake Crystal Orb is only $8.99 most places, so buying one of those along with the card is no big deal.

 

http://www.2cooltek.com/ati9800.html I'm wondering why he used Arctic Silver Epoxy instead of the regular Arctic Silver 5 for the heatsink since it already has pins...otherwise, it looks relatively easy to replace the heatsink with this particular Thermaltake model. I'm not going to overclock either.

 

Thanks everyone!