The last two video cards in my computer have been Nvidia: TNT and then GF2Ultra. Three months ago, I decided to upgrade my video card. After doing the research, it appeared the 9700 Pro was the best card on the market for a resonable price (note: I DID NOT say BEST performance/price ratio!). So I bought one from a well know company that shall remain nameless to protect the innocent.
It arrrived a few days after I ordered and I installed it in my ASUS P4S333 based computer and powered up (note: I have been upgrading my computer for over 7 years and over 10 video cards. I know how to do upgrades and I have a static strap at home). Strange. No video. Computer will not fully boot, but it doesn't give any beep codes or voice codes. I double check how the card was seated (perfectly), power cable (connected), etc. No joy. It won't turn the video card on. I pulled all the other cards out of the system to see if there was some kind of conflict. No joy and no video still. So, I put the old GF2 back in and it boots right up without a problem.
I'm kind of leaning towards either MB or power supply issue (Not too strong on the power supply as I have a PC Power and Cooling 300 ATX supply that has worked flawlessly for almost 2 years) at this point. The next step to test out was download the latest firmware for my MB (I had kind of let that slip a little. I was two revs out of date...). Reinstall 9700 Pro and reboot. No video.
At this point, I give the company a call and explain the problem and what I have done so far. They issue an RMA and cross ship a new card (after carefully charging me card first, just incase I don't return the old card...). New-new card arrives. Install it. No video. I scream. I decide what the heck, I have had my eye on one of the new Antec 550 watt power supplies for a while, so now was as good a time as any to buy one. Install new power supply. reboot. No video. Sigh.
I reinstall my trusty GF2U card and start doing more digging online (I should have gotten to this point earlier, but I'm hard headed). I finally dig my way deep enough into Asus's forms and find that the P4S333 is not compatible with any AGP 8X CAPABLE card. It doesn't have to be set to run that speed, it only has to be able to and it won't work on this MB. Ok. Now I am getting somewhere. The new 655 boards where out and I was getting the hankering to test out out dual channel DDR anyway, so I bought the MSI 655 board. You know the drill: pull box, rip it to small bits, reinstall new bits and the old bits you are going to keep, try to figure out which sound card cable go where to the 5.1 speaker system, etc... Reboot. And I have video!!!!
Great! I grab the latest drivers (and make sure all my other drivers are up to date as well) and give FutureMark 2003 a run. Big difference in scores, no doubt. Almost 5000 with a 2.0 Ghz P4. Not bad at all. I fire up Army Ops and sure enough, I am seeing a 50% increase in frame rate. Nice. All is wel and I am happy.
For all of 6 weeks. Then my computer starts to get unstable. It locked up. Hard. A reboot got it running again and I didn't have any more problems. For 3 days. Then another lockup. Hard. Reboot. Etc. This gets worse and worse and I start getting windows XP errors after a lockup reboot saying the "9700 Pro video card" had a hardware failure. Great... I try to underclock the card (it was set to factory settings during all this time) to see if that would help. Not one lick. Another call to the manufacture. Anther RMA. Anther $15 sending the old card back.
The third card arrives and gets installed. Boots up with no issues. I fire up the game and start playing. I make it past the 10 minute mark and I start getting happy again. Four hours later, my computer locks up hard. Sigh. My computers case temperature is running about 40C and my CPU is running about 38C underload, so temp isn't a problem. Heck it is the same as it has been ever since I installed the P4 in my case (an In-Win Q500Z full tower case with lots of room and lots of cooling fans pushing and pulling). This time, when I contact the manufacture, I am no longer interested in a replacement card. I want my money back. They agree and the third 9700 Pro heads back to the manufacture. I'm still waiting on the refund, but this is not unusual as I only sent it back last Tuesday.
I would be perfectly willing to write this off as a fluke with this one manufacturers design. Then I remembered a lock up problem my cousin was having with his computer late last year. The problem then was traced back to an ATI manufactured 8500 card. Same symptoms: ran perfect in 2D, but was unstable in 3D. I am not willing to so easily write this off now.
So, like Soric2, I will be sticking to NVidia for my next card as well. I think when the refund come in, I'm going to stuff it in the bank and wait until the 5900 is on the market and less than $400. That is not much more than I paid for my 9700 Pro ($320, but it wasn't a no name brand either) and I will have a couple of pay checks to stick a little more money away. I hope this was a fluke. But it fits with the various stories I have heard about problems with ATI based cards. Just a lot more of them out there than with the Nvidia cards, even though there are a lot more nvidia cards on the market. They have made huge inroads in the last year, no doubt. The NV30 was a joke (also, no doubt!), so let's see how the NV35 works out. Maybe in another couple of years I'll give ATI another chance with video cards (If they are still doing as well in performance as they are now). But a 5% increase in frame rates is not NEARLY worth an unstable system.
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