There I was sitting down to my nth scenario of the evening, when I experienced a dreaded colour shift on my monitor. Now I was reasonably sure that I hadn’t kicked the monitor cable, so this combined with no response from the keyboard, was putting my mind onto only one possible path. The GFX card (Nvidia 8800 GTX) had finally given up the ghost. To be honest there had been a few signs in the past couple of months, but wanting to put of the inevitable, I had ignored it. So I ripped the side of the case, reseated the card, reattached the power supply to card and prayed, in vain.
Yes it had decided to shag me over just before the weekend. Yes it’s late Thursday night, but the situation is still recoverable.
So moving downstairs with a swiftness that belays my age, I commandeered the laptop from the wife. This is a crisis, strong action is needed to stave off disaster. I’m that man, it’s my mandate from heaven. So I head over to my favourite website, which I know does Saturday morning deliveries (For more money) and select a Sapphire ATI 5850, which I’d had my eye for since my upgrade to a I7 920, a good few months back. I just wanted to fit it at the same time as my new case, but no time for that.
Put the little sucker in the basket and head to the checkout. Bugger, what’s my password.. attempt 1,2,3,4 and 5 all blew past. FFS where’s my email, on my gaming PC, where else. So now I’m going to be on the phone to them in the morning, post dropping daughter off at nursery. I just hope to god, that nothing else got fried. Mood = STRESSED.
Update: Thank god, I ordered an overspec’d laptop for the wife a couple of weeks ago. Backup plan Zeta now instigated!
8800 gtx. Isn’t that video card like 5 years old? It was in your i7-920? I swear my old computer had that with a video card slot that was now obsolete. Am I confused?
Anyways it is always nice to get a new video card. My i7-920 came with an ATI about a year ago, and looking at new video cards just after a year it seems I am two generations behind. I swear you go broke keeping up with technology.
I wanted my current upgrade to me a multi bump affair. I didn’t want to get all the uplift in one go. So I first did the CPU/Memory and motherboard, leaving the gfx card to come alomng with a new case, witht the final step to be the SSD. Which we all know is moving very fast at the moment, so any time delayed there is good.
So I am doing the GFX card without the case, since I don’t have the freee time to do a proper case upgrade, with all the wiring hidden, when I have a floor and cabling to lay in the house over the next month or so. Insufficient bandwidth.
Rofl loved the description of “utmost urgency”, I could vividly imagine it and it made me chuckle. Well done. :>
As for the gfx, I have a love/hate relationship with those suckers. The most frequently upgraded and repaired computer part I’ve ever encountered. But when you do get a new one working, it’s goodness. So you’re now playing on your wife’s laptop? Wish I had one that could run WAR.
Good luck with your upgrade.
New GFX card in and running. Paid the money for Saturday morning delivery. If you’re spending £233 for a new gfx card, whats an extra £14 to get it for Satuday night. You’re in a hole so to speak and I could get myself out of it, with some extra funding. I wonder if I could apply for a rebate from the TARP fund?