Is fixing an MSI G4Ti4400 (128MB) card worth it?

[KF]

I got this refurb at compgeeks last July. It came in a retail box with some OK games. It is by far the best 3D video card I ever had. (I'm not a gamer, but I have a few.) It was at least twice as fast in plain 2D as my Geforce2 GTS. Things zipped. It is a colorful thing too with a fancy silk-screened heat sink. I loved it. It quit a couple of months ago. On the receipt it had a 180 day warranty. Oh well. Now I am considering getting it fixed by MSI (I got an RMA #). Only, I think it will cost me. Anybody know how much ? MSI did not answer that part of my inquiry.

When were the first 4400's made?

The problem is the serial number. The numbers are not like what MSI describes on their site, at all. The site says the first 4 digits are the year and month, and determines the start of the warranty. The most similar number begins 2201. That would be 2022, January. I don't think so. Maybe refurbs have the number tags replaced? The other begins 1184 (maybe it's compgeeks?) The reply from MSI substituted a different serial number which bears no resemblance at all to what I filled in, and says "normal warranty" (which would be nice!), although they say if the info is incorrect it will be based on the actual product received. Hmm... As I say, they did not respond to my question about cost without a warranty. Did anybody ever have out-of-warranty service like this? Is it like $75 an hour, minumum 1 hour, plus parts and shipping?

Oh yeah, I didn't OC it except to see what it would do the day I got it. The dang thing was already so quick in anything I had I didn't see the point.

The way video cards change fast, it might be more sensible to apply any money to a NEW card, except it seems a better, new card might cost over $130, which is more than I paid for this.

 

[Cerb]

$127 on pricewatch for a MSI GF4 Ti 4200, brand new.
Unfortunately, yes, it will cost more for a better card. The GF4 cards are *still* the prime recommendation for people with a budget under $120 (FS/FT forum for cheaper).

If you only want 2d, a Leadtek or MSI FX 5200 aught to be good, but it will be slower in everything 3d than that GF4, and by a significant margin.

If you want to get a new card, I'll assume NVidia, and want good 2d, in descending order of quality, look for:
Leadtek, Gainward, BFG, MSI, Chaintech.

If you want to try to find a used GF4, add Visiontek to that list.

Good luck.

 

[MichaelZ]

it's probably worth it to send it away for RMA.

 

[KF]

How it turned out.

I sent the card off Friday June 18, about noon. I decided to to check how much the US Post Office would charge for a reasonably quick shipping method. $3.13 for first class postage, 12.3 ounces. They said it would get there within 3 days. Last time I RMAed something, I sent it UPS and it cost over 9 bucks and took 9 days to get there. This package arrived Monday at MSI. I know the arrival time because MSI has an on line tracking system where you can see how your RMA is doing. The next stage MSI lists is "processing" , which they started on Wednesday. It was still processing until Friday of the next week, July 2. MSI sent me an email that day saying they had completed my RMA number and shipped it UPS, with the tracking number linked. And UPS tracking said it was shipped July 2, and was scheduled to arrive July 9. It seems to have gone into the twilight zone until July 8, when new tracking locations appeared, and it did arrive today July 9. Not too quick compared to the US Post Office, but exactly according to schedule. The neat thing about all this online tracking is I didn't have to just stew wondering if things were proceeding or not.

MSI charged me nothing, and I got a new video card in a retail box, to my amazement. There was no problem with the non-conforming serial numbers that I was so worried about.

Opening the box, and pulling back the packing material, it seemed to be an FX series card, and at first I was disturbed. I liked what I had. I thought it would be one of the lower echelon Nvidia cards. I can't follow all the card numbers and letter suffixes, like the experts. SE, plain, XT, Ultra. But WHOA! An FX5900XT 128MB VIVO seems to be a seriously better card.

My old card had some cosmetic advantages. It was purple (instead of MSI red), had a purple trim silkscreened heatsink with a picture. The copper colored heatsink on this new one isn't bad. ( I don't think if is actually copper?) I may have to investigate how compatible this 8x AGP card is with some of my mobos, because I switch things around a lot. I'd hate to burn up anything. This card evidently pulls some juice, because it has a plug to go directly to the PS.

So MSI treated me very well, and their robot RMA info system works nicely. I guess the RMA department was a little backlogged, not bad really. MSI has moved up in my personal rating.

.

 

[Acanthus]

Nice to see MSI treated you so well, thats a massive upgrade.

 

[Insomniak]

Probably cost more to get it repaired than to replace it with something better.


Edit: replaced with a 5900XT huh? Wow - far beastier than you Ti 4400 (which is what I have right now). Nice.

 

[nick1985]

have can a card be faster in 2D than another?

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: nick1985
have can a card be faster in 2D than another?

For some reason my 9800 Pro seems to change resolutions faster... I always thought that was more monitor dependant... and maybe it's just my imagination, but the 9800 Pro seems to do it faster.

 

[KF]

Originally posted by: nick1985
have can a card be faster in 2D than another?

You don't know?

Windows redraw faster. It's easy to see. Yeah, I know the reviewers generally say 2D is fast enough on all cards. For that reason the huge jump in speed came as a surprise. The difference between the Geforce2 GTS and Geforce4 Ti4400 was drastic. Like I said, at least twice as fast. I really missed it when the 4400 crapped out. Unfortunately, the FX5900XT does not seem much different than the Geforce2 GTS. Too bad. People's impression of how fast their computer is comes from how fast Windows redraws. Try switching to the VGA driver and moving a window. Sheesh.

I once mentioned on the forum that I tried out someone's business computer, a 2400MHz P4 (quad pumped dual channel?) for an hour, just noodling around in programs, no games, no Internet. By the specs, it would seem to be a good performer. It should easily beat my 1400MHz non-XP Athlon, with an ancient KT133 chipset and SDRAM, but it seemed like a slug. My 500MHz K6-2+ computer might be better. I was told it was probably due to the Intel "Extreme Graphics." Of course, it is plenty fast enough; it just doesn't seem fast.

Games do not look any better on the FX5900 than they did on the 4400 -not that I could see. Possibly screens with massive numbers of explosions are smoother. Then again, why should the games look better? They're all a couple of years old.

I'm not a gamer. Games are an interesting curiousity to me, more addictive and frustrating than enjoyable. I'm curious because of all the enthusiasm expressed by gamers. When I get done, I'm glad its finally over with, and I'm disappointed with the experience. But I can't stop till I figure out a way through all the scenes, and find out what the next step is. Addictive is what it is. Obviously the game's authors could arrange the opponents so you could never possibly win. Some places it seems like you can't, no matter what trick you try. Then if you try long enough, it seems like they'll let you through, or maybe the randomizer lets you have an easy one. As for visual quality, all games look like crap compared to reality or even a picture. The only place they give the illusion of reality is where they map a picture onto some form. When you get close, you can see it's 2D. Rocks do not look like rocks. Plants do not look like plants. Characters have pointed places around their outlines. Heck, boxes don't even look like real boxes. They rely on monsters and fantasy landscrapes because attempting reality looks so ridiculous. Going by the results achieved so far, games will not look like a TV picture in this century.

Surprisingly, considing the juice it must pull with that aux power plug, I cannot feel any heat coming off the FX5900XT in whatever game, unlike the Ti4400. Touching the heatsink, it feels barely detectably warm. The fan is quieter than even the GTS. I can't feel any wind from it anywhere. I wonder if that heatsink really is copper? Putting the GPU up to 396MHz and the memory up to 812MHz with MSIs utility does not seem to do any harm. I wonder how far it will go?