Hi guys, I have a major computer problem which I suspect may have started with an expiring graphics card. As things stand My screen is filled with little white squres and it is very difficult to even read this board. I tried a system restore but that just compounded my problem and now I cant turn on my antivirus, internet explorer wont work and I can no longer do a system restore as thats just keeps saying unable to restore no matter what point I choose.
Anyway my point in posting is that I need some good advice from someone knowledgable as I am completely out of the loop when it comes to current graphics cards. I currently have a saphire radeon4870 2gb vapourX card and I want to stay with an AMD card Can someone recomend a card that has at least 2gb and is equal to or better than the one I have. Can someone please reccomend a suitable card and a source in the UK?

Honestly I don't know a lot about AMD cards so I can't suggest much there, but I will suggest Scan.co.uk and Aria.co.uk for parts. Aria have always been great but I recently moved to Scan because of their amazing postage system. They email you every step of the order, Picking, Packing, dispatch and out for delivery, and text you to say what time it's going to arrive, within a 1 hour window, and so far it's been bang on every time.

Good luck getting it sorted though mate.

I have a sapphire card in my new system, a 6870 I believe. Seems to run everything fine.

i've got a Nvidia GTX260 has been a beast of a card for me. It definatly sounds like a graphics card dieing, exact same thing with the squares etc happened to me with my old graphics card!

Well I am obviously going to miss the next races. Thanks for the input so far guys but I have already decided I want to stick to AMD cards so please please if someone with a bit of knowledge acn look at my previous post on the subject can get back to me with a recomendation, that would be great. I dont know when I will be back fit to race as my problems seem to be growing. Directx09c seems to have gone missing from my system as well. I think that is probably down to the failure of the system restore I tried. I cant guarantee how long I will be able to acces the forum as I am having to log in via a link to hotmail on my MSN messenger! If that goes as well I am screwed lol so if I go missing its not that Ive got fed up with you guys lol
once more what I am looking for is an AMD card which is at least as good as the card I mentioned in my first post and it must at least be a 2GB card. sooner I can get some recomendations, sonner I can get back on track. Geez Im missing it like hell already!

Sorry I can't be of any more assistance with card suggestions With I could get a racing brother back on track!

As a meantime;

Does your processor/mobo have any inbuilt graphics capabilities? It might be worth removing your old card and trying to uninstall all of its drivers, and seeing it that helps the problem. You could then attempt to reinstall it if it all works. That way you can completely isolate the problem to the card, not to software.

Worst comes to worst you might be able to run rFactor on low settings using the onboard graphics (assuming you have it) in order to get online temporarily.

The 6870 is probably the card with the best value on the market today, but I am not aware of any versions with 2GB.
More expensive, but available with 2GB are the 6950, 7850 and 7870, all lightyears ahead of the 4870.

Two bits.


No testamoinials, just Googleized it, but...

http://www.ebuyer.com/

http://www.scan.co.uk/


Depending on budget...

Radeon HD69xx or Radeon HD7xxx series cards. Wouldn't suggest going back any further than that in versions.

ATM, the NVIDIA 580 is a good alternative (if you want to switch).

Heard it from multiple places the new NVIDIA 680 kicks the snot out of hot Radeon HD79xx... and I personally prefer AMD/ATI cards!

What he said

The fact you are looking for a 2GB card narrows your options quite a bit so be prepared to spend Ł150-200ish. There are a couple of 2GB 6850's around. Pretty good upgrade for the money.

http://www.ebuyer.com/322126-sapphire-hd...rd-11180-15-40g

If you want something with even more grunt then look at the 6950's - this would probably be my choice but it's more expensive. If you can find a good deal on one of these then don't think twice. You'll see people recommend these over and over with good reason.

http://www.ebuyer.com/320578-his-hd-6950...medium=products

The 6 series were a real sweet spot for AMD. Good compatibility with older titles and performance in new games too. The 7xxx series are faster but don't play nice with a lot of older DX9 stuff at the moment. At this precise moment in time, and knowing the stuff you play, you would be better served with a 68xx or 69xx series. This may change as the 7xxx drivers mature but their driver division don't know which way is up at the moment so i wouldn't hold your breath. I've had two 7 series and sent em both back but they are probably the most future proof. The 7850 is good bang for the buck.

http://www.ebuyer.com/352912-powercolor-...x7850-2gbd5-2dh

Of course if you want to spend more there's the 7950 and 7970 too.

3 Recommendations:

6850 - Best Value, decent performance
6950 - Great all round performance but more expensive
7850 - Best performer, but only in new titles. The most future proof if you can live with short term issues while driver support settles down.

Good retailers in the UK...

Ebuyer
SCAN
Aria
Overclockers UK

Track down your issues first. From what you describe, you've got a lot going on besides a graphics card issue, like some nasty malware. If I was getting all of those issues at once, even if I were going to buy a new card, I'd verify my backups are up to date and do a clean install with all up to date drivers.


My 2˘:
-try another cable from card to monitor, be sure it's all seated well
-try another card, or video from the mobo if you have that built in
-try another monitor if you see artifacts at all times, like during boot up
-clean the inside of the case, dust is oily and can do odd things.

no luck?
-download MS Security Essentials, disable your current AV(s), install MSE
-scan with MSE, if able to install it
-check your update history to see if there is an obvious point that it stopped updating certain updates repeatedly
-download malwarebytes and scan


still no luck?
-clean install...might be a bit of a PITA if you aren't prepared, but it's free to do.
-updated drivers


THEN I'd buy the card. Get your system running right short of the hardware upgrade.

That said, I'm very happy with my 6950 2 GB1.

Is this XP or 7? If XP and an old installation, I'd go straight to the clean install and consider an upgrade to W7.

This would be my suggestion as well... It sounds like it could be GPU related or general dust build up or install related... It's amazing what a quick clean and reformatting can do... The fact that the system restore didn't fix it and you are using messenger to get here makes me think it's not solely a graphics issue... But I could be wrong...

Good luck with it Stew, I know these things can be very frustrating...

well I have decided my new card will be http://www.ebuyer.com/281704-his-6970-ic...hdmi-h697qt2g2m What do you think Darren? Good choice?

I will be working with an engineer who will be checking my machine over as well as installing my new card and also installing win7 to make things dual boot. I also have another hard drive which will be installed and will carry the win7 installation. If it was just a simple installation of the card with no other issues I would probably have done it myself but when you take into consideration all the other issues that arose along with the added complication of installing an unfamiliar OS, I feel much more comfortable using the services of an engineer. Hopefully should be back up and running in time for the next SCES race.

The 6970 is an awesome card Stew. The reason i didn't mention it earlier was that it's a little overpriced considering it's only slightly quicker than the 6950. Personally i'm not convinced it's worth the extra, but if you want the fastest 6xxx single GPU solution then go for it. You certainly won't be disappointed with the performance

Of course at that price you are bordering on 7950 territory if you can put up with ropey drivers for a bit....

Most 6950s have the possibility to unlock the shaders (changes bios )to allow it to have nearly same performance as
the 6970. I have unlocked my card and it works very well. Have not bothered to overclock it further though.

With the 7000 series released and lowered in price, the 6970-50 will give you a good bang for the buck right now.
I think you can get it dirt cheep as second hand also. And then perhaps the 6950 is allready unlocked.

Well the 6970 has been ordered and should be here on Monday. I am hoping all will be resolved by next weekend!
I hope I dont have another week like this one lol. Aart from my computer troubles,my roof started leaking and my gas fire decided to keep going out! Well they say troubles come in threes so I hope thats my three for a good while. Good news is that i should be able to use this old P4machine to race this weekend if I can get things organised by then. hope to catch up with you all this weekend. thanks for all the advice guys it means a lot to know everybody is ready to help each other out in this group. Great bunch of guys at SimHQ!

You're welcome. I'm like a bear with a sore head when my PC goes down so i know how it feels. The P4 should handle things OK. rFactor scales quite nicely on lower end hardware.

You'll be very pleased with the upgrade, and changing to windows 7 will increase your PC enjoyment considerably. It's a great OS.

Can't wait to see what you think

^^ What he said, im stuck on crappy Vista on my gaming comp, but Windows 7 on my laptop, much prefer 7 to Vista, hopefully gonna upgrade OS sometime, hopefully when i get a job! then i will probs be asking the same things and what i need to turn my comp into a beast! Well hopefully your problems will be solved soon Stew

Darren, would you happen to have some links or details on 7xxx problems with older titles? I'm up for a new card in summer (currently 4890) and loss of my 2006-2011 'slightly older games' is my biggest worry. Or maybe go Nvidia, they seemed to have the better drivers back up to my 9600GT.

Sorry for the late reply Col, i only just spotted this. There are no specific 'problems' as such, but on the two 7xxx series cards i tested i found DX9 performance to be very variable. At best it was still slower than last gen, at worst it was almost a slideshow. These days it seems AMD are concentrating on pushing forward at the expense of legacy support. No doubt a lot of this is down to drivers which are still immature, and also specific game support from the developers - rF2 for example is known to have problems with the 7xx series. I'd like to think the situaton will get better as support and drivers improve but, but i do have concerns about how much effort they will put into fixing it. My guess is that the 5 and 6 series will remain the sweetspot for older games.

On the flipside it slaughters DX10 and 11 stuff.

But then the GTX680 is quicker, quieter, smaller, more efficient and works fantastically well with everything - not to mention the fact NVIDIA had a rock solid WHQL driver ready on release day. it took ATI 3 months to manage that and it's still buggy as hell.

I was left with the overriding feeling that the 7xxx cards were seriously rushed to market. Great hardware but still needs a few months to grow into itself. This is of course, only my experience. Your Mileage may vary

Thanks for getting back to me at all, much helpfull.

I involuntarily switched to ATI on the last built as Nvidia wasn't deliver GTX285 anymore, and I always had the impression that the ATI drivers were not as polished, and not as legacy-orientated (i.e. newer releases known to crack older game support).

I've never heard this or had this with Nvidia... and as I play mostly older games this days I really need to be careful when upgrading.

Thanks!