Wednesday 27 May 2009

Post 100 & sadness

Well, this was supposed to be a blog banter post, but over the weekend I have had hardware issues.

Essentially my graphics card looks to have gone to the big graphics card maker in the sky. This is a problem (and I havnt' changed my skills in days... Why oh why doesn't CCP allow web based change of characters skills?). It started on Monday with some blue lines over the screen... and now appears to have died completely. I'll be trying another reseat operation tonight, but if it fails, I'll have to order a new part. The computer/card is just over 2 years old, so it just our of warranty...

The issue is being a PCI-X card - I don't have a spare capable of running 2 eve clients simultaneously unfortunately.

So I have 2 choices essentially.
  • Buy a new graphics card and hope it fixes issue (comparible card = £200 or about $350).
  • Buy a new computer if above fails to work - about £800
As such it leaves me stuffed for FanFest. I can't book it now - and if I had booked I'd have had to cancel as the expense if the new graphics card fails will be too high.

Basically not having a graphics card = no EVE = no computer. I'd prefer a working computer to fanfest. Its just such a hard decision to make.

Normal service will resume tomorrow with fanfest banter and updates on the graphics card fix plan.

7 comments:

Matthew Park said...

I don't see a paypal link anywhere. :P

Matthew Park said...

Also, do they sell PCI X video cards? I didn't know they existed, unless you mean PCI Express and were just shortening it. PCI X actually does exist though, just not for video cards i think.

What video card did you have that broke?

DeafPlasma said...

hehe, I'm not cheeky enough to do a paypal donate to my woes link.

I mean't PCI Expressx16 and shortyened. I had a Geforce 8800 GTX. Replaced with a GTX 260 with 800Mb of ram, cost me 140 quid with shipping (so about $250). Similar mid range card to the 8800 GTX (which was the best card on market when I got it).

Downside is today I got home, went to pick g/f up and the car wouldn't start - and had to callout the AA. Blinking thing had a faulty battery, so another 40 quid down the drain.

Cheaper than I thought this morning and I did confirm its the gfx card thats gone up the spout... - but its money not accounted for, so something had to give and fanfest is probably it (unless I get a nice bonus from work this month).

Matthew Park said...

That blows.

I had a Geforce 8800 GTS when it first came out and I just upgraded a couple months ago to the GTX 260 (216 cores). Great card.

The 8800s actually were found to have a defect on the chip where they could break. I never had that issue though.

DeafPlasma said...

It could be the 8800 processor bug

As ever the question was ...
pursue (without a computer) a claim on the old graphics card - or just buy a new one.

The issue is just the expense of all this... It's effectively the cost of the fanfest trip.

Still off work tommorow so will write some posts on here while I wait for the new card to arrive.

Tony "EVE's Weekend Warrior" said...

Bummer. No wonder I have not seen you in the com channels talking about your exploits and such ;D

Matthew Park said...

Have you gotten your card yet? You haven't posted in a while.