X1900XTX upgrade advice

Blazkowicz said:
I have a nforce 520, working fine. Just a crazy issue where selecting 1024x768 85Hz will give me 60Hz so I have to run at 75Hz instead. I would like to replace that 7600GT (which I suspect of overheating when gaming for long) with a geforce 210.
The geforce 210/GT220/GT240 generation is maybe a good bet (except noisy GT220s).

On the AMD side, a Radeon 5450 with gddr3 is maybe nice, it's a lot more powerful in games than you would believe by looking at it or its specs.
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Can those still be obtained new? I traded in my 620 for a GT650 (had a 6 pin connector, but PCI 3, DDR5).

SAME ISSUE as 620!!

I wonder what the issue is? Thanks I'm going to shop around some more online. I wanted to buy a card in stock somewhere, doesn't look like that's going to happen (returns are easier that way).
 
210 and 5450 are readily available, and thanksfully still supported by drivers. Radeon 6450 too. They are of course terribly slow for gaming except for old or lightweight stuff.
 
Thanks to all concerned! This problex has been solved!

Here's the saga:

I boiled it down to 3 options...thermal paste...dissect the x1900xtx and clean the heatsink (NEEDED it, I found out) then freshen the thermal paste with some diamond infused snot from outer space (difficult to work with). NEXT option, Flash the BIOS, even though this mboard doesn't support vista, won't let me install the flash tool, and my rig has no floppy drive! third option...sweet little $1600 rig I had my eye on with 8G ram, monster 7870? ATI card. etc.

I embarked. Did the ATI old card work I mentioned, fired it up...okey dokey...fired up 2 Worlds (1)...it made it a little further, but still ended up with the BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH as usual! I bet I just let it go too long without doing that though...K...undaunted, I purchased an external floppy drive....Alas, I could find NOBODY that sells floppy disks anymore...HOWEVER, the mages at some mom and pop geek outlet I like, insisted they could flash my BIOS for $20. All I had to do was shlep it over to them. I did. It worked...OH before that happened the PNY support team called me back and had said they found an mboard like mine, flashed it to current, installed MY card (model), and it WORKED! So I was hopeful, yet doubful, so I gambled $20 bucks to save $1600 I guess.

Anyway it worked. I am now running a GT650 Nvidia (my first Nvidia card) on my ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe "gaming" motherboard!

I instantly installed Skyrim...and have played through the first level. I will be playing Two Worlds 2 soon too!

Anyway thanks for everyone's assistance. So many variables!
 
That's great!

You should still build a new computer in the near future. There are many games that won't play well on such an old platform. Even a dual core i3-3220 will fuckin smoke that FX-60. I mean SMOKE it :!:
 
I'm pretty sure any motherboard from the 2000's supports boot from USB, so you could have used an usb drive to flash the bios, you just need to find the right files for it to work...
 
I don't have a CD R/W. I opted for the CD/DVD reader instead. Everyone's against me. Oh and since I reported, BOTH my mouse (had a new spare) and my CD/DVD drive have DIED! Is this a PSU problem? My rig only fires up every OTHER time! Hit the "on" button, whiz...nothing. Hit the "off" button...unplug...15 seconds...plug...hit the 'on" button, wait for it...WHAMO! it works! Except for the CD/DVD and mouse issues. I'm thinking Dr Evil has something against me. Does Dr. Evil work here?
 
homerdog said:
That's great!

You should still build a new computer in the near future. There are many games that won't play well on such an old platform. Even a dual core i3-3220 will fuckin smoke that FX-60. I mean SMOKE it :!:
Click to expand...

That new $1600 rig I was looking at, costs HALF of what I paid to BUILD this LIQUID COOLED rig I have now. That is like over 7 years old now. The new one, I mean QUAD core...NEWLY released CPU (my socket 939 FX-60 rig I built was the LAST "week" before it was obsolete)....64 bit (I did that, at least, 7 years ago, just never exploited it), 2G AMD GPU...who knows what that will do. my x1900xtx was only 500M, 1 TERA byte hard drive...I haven't even filled up my 500G hard drive! 700W PSU...I have a 650W now, It seems angry these days. I wish God would kill me now, I feel like a hamster on one of those wheels. Getting nowhere.
 
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HMBR said:
I'm pretty sure any motherboard from the 2000's supports boot from USB, so you could have used an usb drive to flash the bios, you just need to find the right files for it to work...
Click to expand...

HP USB Storage Tool puts MS-DOS on the stick (just io.sys, msdos.sys and command.com) which you can then use to flash the BIOS, and even a graphics card's BIOS. You need the .exe program that flashes BIOS and the BIOS image, and typically need to run a very simple command like "awdflash grbl1014.bin".

Though, I once had to start from a provided CD-ROM image, mount it, extract the content of a diskette image that was included in it, and flashed that way instead of burning the stupid CD the way the vendor intended it.
The USB method is a least a bit reliable, with a floppy disk you ran the risk of bricking your PC because of a bad sector. I thought using a floppy was insane in the good old times (or bad old times) and would rather boot DOS from a HDD when USB booting didn't exist (Windows 95/98 and press F8 works, even Windows ME with patch to enable booting in raw DOS)
 
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