Just a heads-up for everyone...

[Bob Schroeck]

It would appear the video card on my home tower system is dying.  It's already very difficult to read the screen and I don't expect it to last much longer.  While I have a replacement in hand it's currently useless because my machine's BIOS doesn't play well with it, as folks might remember.  (And my attempts to update the BIOS failed for reasons I am unsure about.)  So I'm going to see if I can find another of the same card, as old as it is, somewhere on the net.  (And if you or someone you know has a functional NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 they don't need, let's talk.)  Failing that, I might have to do something radical like replace the motherboard entirely... or even get a new machine outright.

Anyway, the point is that for the foreseeable future my access to the forums (among other things) will be limited to my work machine and the occasional session through my phone.  I'll be here, just not as often as usual.

[Bob Schroeck]

And an update. A quick check on eBay and I found a brand-new, still in factory shrinkwrap, GTS 450 card by EVGA. If all goes well I should be back to full functionality in a week.

[Bob Schroeck]

And last night the original card gave up the ghost.

Meanwhile, the new card has already been shipped.

<crosses fingers>

[Bob Schroeck]

And the new video card came this morning. After work I'll swap it in and see if I wasted money on it or not.

[Bob Schroeck]

And... while it initially looked like the new card was at least the start of the fix, by the evening's end the screen went black again. I am beginning to suspect the monitor is at least partly to blame. Fortunately, I have small flatscreen TV handy that I can swap in as a test, and that's my plan for tonight.

[ckosacranoid]

Good luck?

[Bob Schroeck]

Thanks.

[Bob Schroeck]

And it turns out to be the monitor.

Time to go shopping.

[robkelk]

I just got one of these, myself.

It's sweet.

And inexpensive, because it's been replaced in the manufacturer's lineup with a 4K monitor.

[Bob Schroeck]

Oh, that's very nice. I'll have to keep that in mind.

[classicdrogn]

I guess the good news is that you actually have a spare graphics card in hand, even if it's old? The three-generations-outdated Radeon RX580 I bought (edit: two years) ago for $300 would be worth $50 more if I pulled it out and sold it now, assuming only half current MISB retail price and that I had something to replace it with.

[Bob Schroeck]

Even better, it's a card that's designed for double-barrelled use, with two cards in a system and a little bridge between them to supercharge your graphics. So it's not like I wasted the money -- once I get the new monitor I'll slot both cards, install the bridge, and go to town.

[classicdrogn]

Check to make sure your motherboard supports that first - IIRC both companies' versions of that required some extra hardware as well as BIOS support. And of course the amount of power your PSU can in fact supply. Both obvious things until you forget them... or perhaps after.

e: Again with my own RX580, I was quite surprised to find, upon checking, that it can nominally draw up to 280w full-out. Not that I use graphics-intensive software often, since Blender and folding@home don't want to work with it and I rarely play games, never the cutting edge ones, but still. That's more than half the total rated system power.

[Bob Schroeck]

Actually, I built the computer more than a decade ago from the specs someone here on the forums posted for a machine that could in fact support that, so I have no concerns on that front.

[Bob Schroeck]

And I am delighted to announce that today I received my new monitor, the one that Rob recommended almost two weeks ago, and it is awesome.

Is it possible for a monitor to adversely affect system performance? Because I swear my bootup was faster and smoother than it's been for a while.

[Black Aeronaut]

It may actually be your graphics cards.  Some motherboards can leverage the GPU to boost overall performance by offloading from the CPU to the GPU the process threads better suited to a GPU's instruction set.

Seeing as you now have two of the same graphics cards working in tandem, it does not surprise me your computer is running faster.

[Bob Schroeck]

Oh, no, I haven't installed the new card yet. I just wanted to stop looking at the repurposed TV as fast as possible.