Radeon X800XL

[PlyrHatin]

I have this card and the games are starting to pixelate during game play. I was in a Madden tournament when it happened. I want to know what causes this? Is the card going bad, and if so, what would be a good replacement? It's about 4 or 5 years old, and hasn't caused any problems until now. I was looking at a Geforce 8800GTS 512mb or a Radeon HD 3870 512mb, GDDR4 PCI-e as a replacement. I'm running a P4 3.2 ghz, with XP Media Center Edition 2003, with a gig of PC3200 DDRam. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[bc4]

I'll let someone else comment about the upgrade path but...

the most common cause is overheating. Open up that case and clean the fans and the card off. The second possible cause is that your Power Supply is getting to old and is struggling to power your card. BTW people will need to know about your power supply BEFORE they go recommending a card.

 

[crusoe74]

BTW people will need to know about your power supply BEFORE they go recommending a card.

Absolutely.

But if you have an ample power supply I would go with the Radeon HD3870 with your set-up. I think the 8800GTS 512 would be too bottlenecked by your system to be that much better than the Radeon.

 

[dirtmountain]

^
bc nailed it. Open it up and clean it. Make a note of your power supply (total watts and amps on 12v ) and motherboard. Is it an AGP or PCIEx16 socket ?

 

[SEALBoy]

It could be overheating/dying. Explain what exactly you mean by "pixelation".

List your PSU, as that is crucial when looking for a new card. Also make sure you don't have an AGP card. 8800GTS is faster than the 3870, although the 8800GT 512MB is at VERY attractive prices right now.

 

[PlyrHatin]

I have a 300 watt power supply Pixelating is when the graphics become so distorted, you can't see the images anymore. Then a black screen appears and it shuts down. The X800XL is a PCI-e based card. Would need the same to upgrade. I cleaned out the card with compressed air, re-installed and after a few mins, the same thing occured. Time for a new card and power supply I think.

 

[yadge]

Just making sure, but you do have a pci-express slot, right? Not agp?

 

[PlyrHatin]

That would be correct. What would be my best bet for a card upgrade? The Radeon HD 3870 or the Geforce 9600GT 512mb, or the Geforce 8800GT 512mb?

 

[hsetir]

First upgrade only power supply that would sustain with 8800gt. Then check if x800xl works without error and if you could do with it. Then upgrade your card.
9600gt/8800gs have relatively low power requirements and if you are not upgrading your processor in near future, I would recommend against 8800gt or higher.

 

[PsyKhiqZero]

Before you do anything else remove the card from the PC then push it back in. i'd do it three times. sometimes the cards can creep out of place.

the x800xl was a pretty low powered card. "it drew all power from the pci-e slot" If you wanna gamble a bit buy a new cooler for it. 4-5 years is about when these fans start to go bad. a new cooler is about 40 bucks and can save you the cost of a new psu and gpu.

 

[San Pedro]

My x800xl wouldn't have ran on 300w PSU. It didn't run on a 380w PSU I had, although mine was AGP. Great card though except it lacks sm 3.0.