testing
Sunday, December 28, 2008
My tennis mate passed me his old ATI X800GT yesterday, but since I went for the class bbq which ended at about 11, and since I was feeling sick, I turned in and didn't get it running until today this morning.
I don't expect you to read this if you don't really dig computer fixing stuff. It's my first venture into it.
>>>Fixing it.
Getting out the old X300 (I have never believed that it is actually a 256mb card, given that it works on the exact same level as my x200. I guess the difference is too marginal.) took longer than it should have since I was feeling a bit cautious and not wanting to exert brute force at first. Once I did that, I plugged in the new card and its cooler system, except that the cooler system was pretty damn big and couldn't fit inside. I removed the obsolete Dialup Modem card, but it still wouldn't fit, so I took out the system and let it run outside. (like some hamster)
I played Half Life 2, Episode 2 as a benchmark test to see how well it would run. It was auto-selected to run on highest graphics, which my old card would never make. I played for a while at the train wreck, but just as I was about to exit the field, the screen turned into a similarly irritating version of the blue-screen... except this time it seemed a bit worse.
The CPU was hot, and it emnated primarily from the graphics card. While I waited for it to cool, I was contemplating my options. I thought cards come with default heat sinks, so I took the cooler system out, but I found out it was attached to the main chip, not some sheat sink. Checking out my old card's heat sink, I found that the shape of its screw holes looked the same as the ones on the x800gt, so I took my new card and removed its cooler system and placed that in my old heat sink. While it is three models higher than the X300, it clearly was inadequate a cooling system for this card, and overheated much faster than previously.
So I called my friend the second time and he told me that I might have set the cooler system to high speed, which I found out to be true. I switched the knob to low speed this time and repaced the old heatsink, and it seems to be working now. Episode 2 did hang at the loading screen, though, so I need to test it further. He's going to be mad if he thinks I will buy it at any more than 50 bucks. I'm thinking even lower.
posted by joseph at 12:00 PM