Blackbird - 9800gt finally gave out. Bye bye SLI

So with quirky issues, crashes, and black screen of death on factory Blackbird, I finally narrowed to the nvidia 9800 gt (the 2nd unit used for the physx 3d).

I have removed offending GPU and am now running on a single card. Since I'm an old phart and not playing the video games I once did, I am not missing anything that I can tell.

However, I am sure the days are numbered for the remaining GPU - and was wondering what you all might suggest for a GPU (retaining the 780i MB in the BB) ? Dual GPU's and SLI not a necessity.

Also am retaining the original power supply. I am not yet ready to gut it and put in new MB like many others are already doing, I'll start saving for it one day, though. They say copying is the sincerest form of flattery, and that nvidia-green blackbird which I saw somewhere - I think the EVGA forums, really does it for me... but that is WAY off in the future.

OK, back on topic - replacement GPU ??

Oh, and I'm sorry this isn't about lace wigs.

I really wanted a lace wig mullet for when I drive my trans am but all that guy sells is lies and broken promises of fake hair.

Is this said green build?

(PhotoOtaku wins this round, Just wait until I get that rage case)

I remember when 1 of the 2 9800gt's I had died for no reason. It was about that time that I said screw it and bought a 285gtx.

If your not going to game with it any card will do. Just get a single 460 on sale. As far as power requirements go I am fairly cretin these came with 900w-1100w power supplies from hp. That should be more then adequate for a single 460.

If you really want to go all out I would say get 2 570's, They are about $320 each atm. I still don't think that having a 580 justifies the price difference. For the difference in performance in between a 570 and 580 id rather save the extra money and use it to upgrade again sooner. This is coming from somebody who ran out and paid 1.2k for a quad 7950 sli when it came out. It had truly groundbreaking graphics but it produced a lot of heat and I was stuck with dx9 cards because they cost so much money I had no choice but to run them for a good while before upgrading. I am not avicating you cheap out and buy the cheapest card you can find what I am saying is it dosnt pay to invest a lot of money in graphics cards as they are always releasing new gpus. Its better to pay less and upgrade often.

Thanks East.

I realize there are many threads about "what video card" out there. I didn't mean to add to them, I just didn't want to get something that for sure would not work in the BlackBird (is that even possible though? Plenty of room, all use the PCI-Express, do all have the 6 pin power though).
Yeah - I will look for a bargain out there and probably go with a midrange nvidia if there is a big sale. You are dead-on about newer technologies constantly being released, but there is always a point where I go "uh-oh - too late" ( anyone want to buy an old EISA-VESA motherboard ) because they will no longer work in our motherboards or with our power.

Thanks for your feedback - and for the forum to be a "sounding board" while I think of getting a new video card... and... lace wig.

Not all video cards use 6pin pcie connectors. Some of them use 8pin pcie power connectors but almost every video card I have seen includes an adapter that converts 2 molex connectors into the connector that is required to power the card. If your power supply is decent you should not have any trouble using one of these adapters need be.

East: I will probably pull the trigger on the new one this weekend, so after that it is just build time and data transfer time until we can set up something on the RAGE. Any last-minute suggestions?

Yeah that was my "ode to being Green" build. Haven't even fired it up in a while.

Well, get crackin'.

It doesn't do anything that my other PC's can't do, ...why bother it.

PhotoOtaku wrote:It doesn't do anything that my other PC's can't do, ...why bother it.

But its... GREEN! Such a shame to hear about so much nvidia green going to waste.

PO is no longer a True Believer. If he was, he would fire it up simply because it was there.

Shoot, I sold the GPUs a while ago on ebay. There is a single 8800 in there now a SSD boot drive and one 1TB Disk, ...and green RAM. Really not much reason to get excited.

You could fix that.

New project! New project!

No more new projects, my wife bought a house that comes with a better school district, ...that's my current project. The house seems to need everything except green painted RAM.

As long as the house does not need a lace wig you should be fine.

50+ feral cats living in the crawl space for several years, there is enough cat fur to make our own lace wigs. Truly disgusting, the amount of damage these cats and the previous owners neglect have caused.

Oh. Dear.

Demo?

Are you sure that the previous owner was not a crazy cat lady?

Googling the previous owner, she actually describes herself as a "big critter", she supposedly runs/ran some sort of sideline business as "critter country", ...so yes, she was some sort of crazy cat person. Escrow papers stated something like a dog, 3 cats and a hamster as pets residing there, ...however neighbors said they have had two 200 pound Saint Bernards and we additionally saw a bunny, turtle and several cats on a walk through.

The place smelled really foul, it might have been why we were "effectively" the only people interested in the house. So yes, we gutted it, had to. Even with all the remodeling/renovation we are still under the comps in the neighborhood so I'm happy.

Sounds like the Dario Argento version of Poe's The Black Cat from the anthology Two Evil Eyes. If you have not seen it, let us just say that Argento achieves the nearly impossible feat of one-uppping Poe at the end.

You're braver than I, PO. I'd run away from a project like that.

PO is no pussy.

Well, no. Apparently he is neck deep in pussy.

If not for that house he wouldn't be

{N-TYSH}