Nvidea GeForce 9600 GS Problem!

[Shizer]

Hi,
Apologies, this will be a bit long winded but any help would be fantastic!

(The Background)
Basically, last year April-ish, I posted on here asking for some help with this graphics card. Here is a quick reminder:

"Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2400 MHz
Physical Memory: 3072 MB
Video Card: Nvidea GeForce 9600 GS
Hard Drive: 750GB
Power: Corsair 650w

About 2 or 3 games have had the same problem where, after 20-30 minutes, my whole PC crashes with only the sound looping in the background. Weird thing is, there is no consistency. For example, i was able to run Crysis without crashing once but a game like Assassin's creed, i can not play for more than 15 minutes."

Someone on this board kindly explained that it could be the "black screen of death" 9600GT (Mine being GS, might not matter) was well known to cause problems for people. I went through all the fixes at the time and being skint, I couldn't invest in a new graphics card.

(Currently)

Well now, I have about £90 (Maybe £100 at a push) to spend on a new graphics card and I'm looking for a suitable replacement which is equal, if not better to what I have at the moment.

First things first however, I'd like to make 100 % sure that the graphics card was causing all this problems, so I decided to try my brothers 8600GS. Only thing is, I'm having problems removing a wire which is connected from my graphics card to the motherboard. I'm not sure what it is and how to remove it without damaging it.
Here's couple of pictures of this wire, sorry about the picture quality:
http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/4619/dsc00123.jpg
http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/3931/dsc00122i.jpg

I will discuss about graphics card choices after I test it .
Thanks for your help

 

[Shizer]

Can't seem to edit my post. Was trying to make the images into links as they are pretty big ... sorry

 

[Shizer]

Finally got it sorted! Any help!?

 

[Mousemonkey]

It's a SPIDF cable, for sound via the HDMI output. Just wiggle it a bit.

 

[Shizer]

K, I finally got the wire out!! All I did was pull it from one side of the socket than the other, etc. It comes out pretty easily. Rather annoying to find out it was that easy

Anyways, I tried my brothers graphics card on a game which usually freezes with the 9600GS and success! It worked perfectly with no problems for 1 hour. With my 9600GS, the same game would only last 10 minutes.

I say success because I had this problem for a while now and I didn't know the cause of it. I actually bought a new power supply, thinking it would fix the problem, which it didn't. But its great to find out that this could potentially fix my annoying problem, even if it does mean spending £90 on a new graphics card

OK! Now I need some advice on which card to buy . My budget is £90 (£100 at a push). I'm assuming any graphics card would fit into my motherboard, please correct me if I'm wrong. I would ideally like a better one than the 9600GS.

I was thinking Radeon since I had this bad experience with nVidia but it really depends on which is the best value. All these model names are confusing for me so some help would be fantastic

I found these:
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/prods/Components/Graphics-ATI/ATIHD4850Series/48501GB.html = Novatech ATI Radeon HD4850 1024MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI/HDMI PCI-Express - £85.99[

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/prods/Components/Graphics-ATI/ATIHD5600Series/Sapphire/11168-00-20R.html = Sapphire ATI Radeon 5670 1GB GDDR5 DVI/HDMI/Display Port PCI-Express - £91.06

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/prods/Components/Graphics-Nvidia/NvidiaGTS250Series/GTS2501GB.html =
Novatech GeForce GTS 250 SLI 1024MB GDDR3 TV-Out/VGA DVI PCI-Express - £97.51

These are randoms I found around my price range. Never heard of novatech but I used Sapphire in the past and it didn't cause any problems. Can use www.novatech.co.uk or www.ebuyer.co.uk or any other reliable sources.

Thanks for your help!

 

[Mousemonkey]

This GTS 250 is cheaper than all of those.
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/512MB-Asus-GTS-250-2200MHz-GDDR3-GPU-738-MHz-Shader-1836-MHz-128-Cores

 

[Shizer]

This looks very good . Guessing this won't be any different between the dark knight addition. I'm probably going to buy this.

Just a couple of newbie questions

The memory difference won't be too significant? I have 1279 MB on my current card.

Also, should be able to fit on my motherboard? Its a Diego S Motherboard (Micro ATX)

Thanks for your help

 

[Mousemonkey]

A 9600GSO cannot really use that much memory, it's just marketing and the GTS250 is a 9800GTX+ which is a die shrink of the 9800GTX which is a re-badged 8800GTS which only had 512MB of RAM to begin with.

 

[Mousemonkey]

Oh, and it should fit your motherboard but I don't know if it'll fit in a micro case (if that's what you have).

 

[Shizer]

Na, that's the name of the motherboard.

I was looking at reviews online and the difference between the 1GB and 512mb isn't much. I also tried looking for a cheaper ATI Radeon HD4870 512MB which apparently trumps this card. Unfortunately the price starts from £100
Should be able to play highly demanding games with this me thinks.


Anyway, I'll probably end up buying this tomorrow. Just a little more research on scan.co.uk

Thanks alot mousemonkey

 

[Mousemonkey]

My pleasure mate, I hope you enjoy whichever card you finally decide on.

 

[callitmurda]

Since I had same frustrating experience with nvidia 9600m gs, I'll drop the cure here.
Not gonna waste anyone precious time narrating about my other shots with this bad baby, so right to her favorite position:
set her AGP to 4x. Do it in any way. I did it with Riva Tuner.
Over 'n out