ok guys need a bit of help, basically my trusty 8800gt seems to be about to visit the bin, basically as of last night it keeps crashing whenever i try to play a game, i have not updated or installed anything new at this point and has been working fine for the last 6 months since i installed a new SSD (clean install of windows as well) the usual driver stopped working and recovered message, but wiping the drivers and reinstalling with the latest 306.97 drivers does nothing as it keeps on crashing, rolling back to the 306.23 version still keeps on crashing, checked the temps and max temps are about 60, idles at 45, after a crash it even crashes on the desktop up until the point of booting into safe mode and re-wiping the drivers, after that it boots up fine to the desktop and seems stable up until the point i try to play a game again. rest of my system, is - e8400 at 4ghz, 4gb ddr2 800mhz running at 900mhz, the 8800gt, 64gb sandisk ssd, 500gb samsung f1, currently gaming at 1280x1024 (thanks to kids killing my other monitor about 4 months ago) now my issue is that, in general, but also because of Christmas, i am total broke (3 kids and a wife) but not only that i was planning a full new build in about 6 months time, so really do not want to spend a lot of money on this system. i have been doing a bit of looking around and according to toms hardware i need to be looking at either a gt640 or a 5670/6670 to get similar performance to my 8800gt, as it stands i can cope with that level of performance and to be honest if its cheap enough could probably push myself one step lower and just drop the detail levels for the next 6 months, but doubt i could happily drop any further now the one that has caught my eye is this http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1gb-...-480-stream-processors-displayport-dvi-i-hdmi so same performance for £52 which i could just about stretch too if i forgo a few bits and bobs for myself for christmas, however they also have a a 6570 for £42 which is the tier below but of course £10 cheaper meaning i could probably get me a little bottle of vodka to get through the holidays with. so guys whats your thoughts, am i missing something with my 8800gt that could fix it. is there any other gems out there which i should be looking at?
First thing I do would be to put everything (ie, CPU) back to stock speeds and see if it still happens.
get a second hand 4870 for about £20-30 it will be a jump for you, it's a lot cheaper too example (up for the next 20 hours) http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sapphire-...raphics_Video_TV_Cards_TW&hash=item2325945333 Comparison here: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/613?vs=513 Make sure you get the 1gb model.
