GT240 - Blue Screen (is it to blame)?

[DAVEBARTON75]

Hi DM,

This is at my budget;

http://www.dabs.com/products/xfx-ati-radeon-5850-hd-725mhz-1gb-ddr5-pci-e-hdmi-avp-750X.html?refs=441990000[/color]

if you have chance could you give me your opinion??

Thanks

Dave

[Dark Mantis]

Hi Dave
Yes looks like a good card and free game Bang for buck I think this is about the sweetpoint. It is 256 bit with 1 GB of memory and yet doesn't cost the earth. I really don't know what the XFX cards compare like to other makes but there won't be much difference. I always buy Sapphire because I like their VaporX cards which are very quiet. I would say try EBuyer though because they are usually very good on price and returns should you need to.

[DAVEBARTON75]

ebuyer seems to have some good deals;

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/199655

an improvement??

[Dark Mantis]

Personally I would say yes. Not that there is a lot to choose between the cards I am sure but Spphire is owned by ATI and so I always feel like they shouldbe able to get it right and they are good with keeping the drivers sorted. Alos if you can wait for a couple of days you even get free delivery from EBuyer.

[DAVEBARTON75]

superb, thanks for all you help - much appreciated!!

[Dark Mantis]

You are welcome Dave and let us know how you get on with your new card when you have installed it.

[Badbonji]

Nvidia and ATI have both had their fair share of bad drivers. Generally this is worse when new cards are released.

How do you know it is a GPU problem anyway? Have you properly cleaned out drivers and reinstalled the latest ones/older ones?

You should also run Prime95 and monitor temperatures to ensure that the memory and CPU are both stable to rule them out, as that error is relating to a general hardware failure.

Also I found a HD5850 for a little cheaper with a free game:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-148-XF&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=411

[DAVEBARTON75]

Hi Badbonji,
Thanks for the response...

I had done some troubleshooting in terms of updating and rolling back drivers for the graphics card with no success. The reason i assumed i could pinpoint the problem to the card is that i only get the stop errors when i am using the HDMI output. I can use the machine all day and using the VGA there are no issues. As soon as i plug the HD in it will fail when watching a film or surfing with any flash content.

As it is a new bulid pc i am a little reluctant to find a cure for what i consider to be a faulty part/compatability and spend alot of time, when the card is under warranty. I have returned the GT240 and have the Recommended one from Dark Mantis on order.

cheers

dave

[Dark Mantis]

Please keep us informed of your progress with the new card, Dave.

[DAVEBARTON75]

Hi DM,

Arrived home today to the HD5850

All is installed fine, removed the NVIDIA components - so far so good!

One quick question - Will this card be taking more CPU performance as the Win Rating (which i know to take with a pinch of salt) has dropped quite a bit...or is there something else in the dreaded BIOS i need to search for?

thanks

Dave

[Dark Mantis]

Dont take this as gospel but I am not aware of it using more CPU overhead. No doubt someone will know more about this and be happy to help. I suspect it is just a quirk of the WEI

[DAVEBARTON75]

Its probably not a post for here, maybe i'll send it over to the intel forum and see if they are as efficient as you!

Thanks Again

[Dark Mantis]

You're welcome and please let us know the answer if you find one.

[Badbonji]

Ignore the windows benchmarks... run vantage or something as they are better and more detailed benchmarks. The CPU test in windows 7/vista just measures the CPU performance, keeping your GPU at 0% load and it shouldn't even play a part in the score. When gaming the CPU might become a bottleneck for the more powerful card, but it shouldn't be a problem in your setup.

[DAVEBARTON75]

Thanks for the posts guys,

after much searching and  posting on the intel forum, no-one has been able to tell me why my cpu lost Windows rating score with my new graphics card......a mystery it is!