Oh noes.... Options

[Naoki Maeda]

Well it looks like the fan on my heatsink of my graphics card (Old classic ATI 9700 Radeon) has finally died, and so I am left pretty much gameless and such. And a reason why lately my display has been going all screwed up with artifacts etc. So much for it being a simple heat problem.

At the moment I am currently using my old 3DFX Voodoo 3 (This sucker has never let me down!) just so I can use my computer again. If you wondered why I haven't been around much to help with the ExG server and such, I been slightly busy with other things and now, THIS is another and hugely problematic reason! So yeah I will get back to you later with details and such Cat.

Anyways, now I am left wondering what to do. Do I buy a new heatsink/fan or even a passive heatsink for my graphics card, or just buy a new card altogether with the little budget that I have left. If the first, I'm just worried that it is only the connector on the card that is causing the problem of the fan not working, and hence it will be a waste of time and money (Or even more problems come into play!). And also I'm worried if I go the passive heatsink route, there won't be enough space to fit it as the area around my AGP slot is small i.e. RAM slots are too close as well. Or do I just go the second route getting a new card which will just make me skint, but least I have something a little more powerful to play my games?

At the moment I'm looking at the ATI X1600 cards over at Overclockers as they are well within my price range, anything under £100 basically and I'm still browsing around for more at the moment.

I cannot remember the last time that I had a major problem which was computer hardware related, so this may be a rare situation where you will see me screaming "HELP ME PLEASE!!" .