Mr. Paulson informed me in another thread about the lifetime warranty on the V3 2K cards. That was great because mine was locking up during 3D games. 3dfx allowed me to RMA it on August 29th.
The card had worked OK on my AX6BC in my full tower case for about a year without any trouble. After moving it to a P3B-F in an Enlight EN-7200 case. The card locked with or without a fan on it. The replacement that 3dfx sent out would lock if it didn't have a fan. I used a Nidec GAMMA 28 Ball Bearing Blower on it and it worked fine. So I left the blower on it's been working great for the last month.
This last weekend we installed a Lego construction game on Friday night. It was used a while and the PC was left on all night. It's on 24/7 anyway. In the morning there were "artifacts" by the cursor. I had my son reboot and there were many vertical line type artifacts in the Windows splash screen. At the Windows desktop the icons were small and opaque with very dark background.
I replaced the video card with a V3 3000 and it worked fine. The tech fellow at 3dfx said that it must be heat related. I told him about the blower. He took down all the info I could give him. He even talked me into installing the bogus card in my own PC. Same artifacts etc. He told me that I should have had the refresh rate on the other PC set to "adapter default". I had been running it at either 60Hz or Optimal. It's a Seiko 14" and that's the best it can do at 600x800 true color. The tech. was searching through Price Watch trying to find me a new monitor while I installed the card in my own PC
The guy was a riot. He said there are about 30 technicians there, but only 17 were on duty at the time. He said the Que. was about 30 people deep. And here he was spending 25 minutes on my call! Well, I can see his point. He said the chances of having 2 cards go bad like that was rare. That there must be too much heat in there or the mobo may be at fault.
BTW, while talking he mentioned that he didn't care for the 15GB IBM HDDs that I said were in short supply. While we talked, he located one on Pricewatch in stock for $105. Like I said, he was a nice guy, but maybe not quite accurate. He also mentioned that he builds high end gaming machines in the $5,000 price range! :Q
So, who thinks that case is too hot? The monitor in the BIOS says the mobo temp. is at 87 degrees F and the 400Mhz Celeron is at 125 degrees F. The tech said I ought to carve vent holes in the top of the (3 month old) case! Is it the case? 9 year old Seiko monitor? 3 month old Asus P3B-F mobo? V3 2000 AGP inherently hot or poorly designed? What more can I do than having that blower on the heat sink? Any other suggestions?
The card had worked OK on my AX6BC in my full tower case for about a year without any trouble. After moving it to a P3B-F in an Enlight EN-7200 case. The card locked with or without a fan on it. The replacement that 3dfx sent out would lock if it didn't have a fan. I used a Nidec GAMMA 28 Ball Bearing Blower on it and it worked fine. So I left the blower on it's been working great for the last month.
This last weekend we installed a Lego construction game on Friday night. It was used a while and the PC was left on all night. It's on 24/7 anyway. In the morning there were "artifacts" by the cursor. I had my son reboot and there were many vertical line type artifacts in the Windows splash screen. At the Windows desktop the icons were small and opaque with very dark background.
I replaced the video card with a V3 3000 and it worked fine. The tech fellow at 3dfx said that it must be heat related. I told him about the blower. He took down all the info I could give him. He even talked me into installing the bogus card in my own PC. Same artifacts etc. He told me that I should have had the refresh rate on the other PC set to "adapter default". I had been running it at either 60Hz or Optimal. It's a Seiko 14" and that's the best it can do at 600x800 true color. The tech. was searching through Price Watch trying to find me a new monitor while I installed the card in my own PC
The guy was a riot. He said there are about 30 technicians there, but only 17 were on duty at the time. He said the Que. was about 30 people deep. And here he was spending 25 minutes on my call! Well, I can see his point. He said the chances of having 2 cards go bad like that was rare. That there must be too much heat in there or the mobo may be at fault.
BTW, while talking he mentioned that he didn't care for the 15GB IBM HDDs that I said were in short supply. While we talked, he located one on Pricewatch in stock for $105. Like I said, he was a nice guy, but maybe not quite accurate. He also mentioned that he builds high end gaming machines in the $5,000 price range! :Q
So, who thinks that case is too hot? The monitor in the BIOS says the mobo temp. is at 87 degrees F and the 400Mhz Celeron is at 125 degrees F. The tech said I ought to carve vent holes in the top of the (3 month old) case! Is it the case? 9 year old Seiko monitor? 3 month old Asus P3B-F mobo? V3 2000 AGP inherently hot or poorly designed? What more can I do than having that blower on the heat sink? Any other suggestions?
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