Hey guys, judging by the forums, there's really no chance of getting my Ti4600 replaced that I bought about three-four years ago from the apparently now non-existent VisionTek company, so here's my story:
One night, while happily playing CS:S I get the the one centimeter blocks all over my screen that eventually even farther detiriorated into a mostly white screen with plenty of thin colored lines. After a reboot, my card made it all the way to the WindowsXP log in screen before doing it again. Well, heat was probably the problem, so I just turned it off, cracked open the case and pointed my airconditioning at it. I let it be for probably 1-2 hours before I tried again, only to have the same problem occur even sooner in the boot process. So I guessed that my HSF was dying removed my stock HSF finding the silcon paste baked hard inbetween. I used mineral spirits and even a razor blade to get it all off and replaced it with some generic crap that came with my uber-l33t ThermalTake CPU Heatsink-Fan. I noticed that the cheap plastic springloaded bolts that attached my stock HSF to my GPU were now a bit loose, but I felt that I had re-attached it fairly snuggly. Booted up, no luck, still seemed to "work" but still artifacts all over the place (I think that's what they're called, "artifacts"?). So, I ordered the snazzy Zalman VF-700 Cu (with ArcticSilver 5) and installed it today (didn't install the Ramsinks, because they seemed like a one time deal, and my Ti shouldn't need them anyways). The first boot up got as far as the Windows loading screen before it locked up. Subsequent boot ups failed more quickly. I have some ultra-old/lame AGP cards that I tried just to make sure it was a graphics card problem. One worked (well, it got to the bios screen then froze). Second boot with that card I got two beeps and then what sounds like three rapid ones for a POST. From past experience this means that either my RAM, CPU, or AGP card is missing. Tried the next card, same deal. I remembered that I had expiremented with OverClocking in the past, but I always left my PCI, AGP, and DDR slots alone, only playing with my CPU. I thought maybe I was sending too much juice to my AGP slot on accident, so I reset my CMOS: no fix. So, I've narrowed it down to three possibilities: (1) My three year-old generic PSU just ain't got it and is fubaring my voltage. (2) My AGP slot is ruined. (3) All three of my AGP cards are now junk (not so sad about the old two, but my Ti4600 was $350 when I bought it and still ran HL2 at 50 fps. Professional e-bay sellers want $225 for one even 3 years out of their prime.) If anyone knows exactly what is wrong, let me know. If it happens to be problem number three, what's a good card to replace it with (preferably around $150).
AMD Athlon XP 3000+ (Barton Core 400mhz FSB)*
Soyo KT 400 Dragon Motherboard (max 333mhz FSB)*
512 MB Ram (Generic)
80 GB 7,200 rpm HDD (Seagate)
128 MB Geforce 4 Ti 4600 AGP 4x (VisionTek)
Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS
52x-32x-52x CD-RW (Toshiba)
16x DVD (Toshiba)
FDD drive (?)
350 Watt PSU (hec)
*I could never get a stable connection between my new processor and my Soyo MoBo. I could only run the processor at 266Mhz FSB without doing some funky overclocking that became unstable over 280-somethingMhz. Wouldn't have made the mistake of ordering that CPU if I hadn't thought the "400" on my MoBo was for CPU FSB and not PC3200 ddr ram.
One night, while happily playing CS:S I get the the one centimeter blocks all over my screen that eventually even farther detiriorated into a mostly white screen with plenty of thin colored lines. After a reboot, my card made it all the way to the WindowsXP log in screen before doing it again. Well, heat was probably the problem, so I just turned it off, cracked open the case and pointed my airconditioning at it. I let it be for probably 1-2 hours before I tried again, only to have the same problem occur even sooner in the boot process. So I guessed that my HSF was dying removed my stock HSF finding the silcon paste baked hard inbetween. I used mineral spirits and even a razor blade to get it all off and replaced it with some generic crap that came with my uber-l33t ThermalTake CPU Heatsink-Fan. I noticed that the cheap plastic springloaded bolts that attached my stock HSF to my GPU were now a bit loose, but I felt that I had re-attached it fairly snuggly. Booted up, no luck, still seemed to "work" but still artifacts all over the place (I think that's what they're called, "artifacts"?). So, I ordered the snazzy Zalman VF-700 Cu (with ArcticSilver 5) and installed it today (didn't install the Ramsinks, because they seemed like a one time deal, and my Ti shouldn't need them anyways). The first boot up got as far as the Windows loading screen before it locked up. Subsequent boot ups failed more quickly. I have some ultra-old/lame AGP cards that I tried just to make sure it was a graphics card problem. One worked (well, it got to the bios screen then froze). Second boot with that card I got two beeps and then what sounds like three rapid ones for a POST. From past experience this means that either my RAM, CPU, or AGP card is missing. Tried the next card, same deal. I remembered that I had expiremented with OverClocking in the past, but I always left my PCI, AGP, and DDR slots alone, only playing with my CPU. I thought maybe I was sending too much juice to my AGP slot on accident, so I reset my CMOS: no fix. So, I've narrowed it down to three possibilities: (1) My three year-old generic PSU just ain't got it and is fubaring my voltage. (2) My AGP slot is ruined. (3) All three of my AGP cards are now junk (not so sad about the old two, but my Ti4600 was $350 when I bought it and still ran HL2 at 50 fps. Professional e-bay sellers want $225 for one even 3 years out of their prime.) If anyone knows exactly what is wrong, let me know. If it happens to be problem number three, what's a good card to replace it with (preferably around $150).
AMD Athlon XP 3000+ (Barton Core 400mhz FSB)*
Soyo KT 400 Dragon Motherboard (max 333mhz FSB)*
512 MB Ram (Generic)
80 GB 7,200 rpm HDD (Seagate)
128 MB Geforce 4 Ti 4600 AGP 4x (VisionTek)
Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS
52x-32x-52x CD-RW (Toshiba)
16x DVD (Toshiba)
FDD drive (?)
350 Watt PSU (hec)
*I could never get a stable connection between my new processor and my Soyo MoBo. I could only run the processor at 266Mhz FSB without doing some funky overclocking that became unstable over 280-somethingMhz. Wouldn't have made the mistake of ordering that CPU if I hadn't thought the "400" on my MoBo was for CPU FSB and not PC3200 ddr ram.
