5th March 2018, 9:30 PM
So, this happened about three months ago, back in December. I was thinking of making a thread about it, but never did. In early December, I finally updated to the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, the latest major update to Windows 10... and either it messed something up badly or there was a very unlikely coincidence, because after the update finished my video card stopped working. Now, I bought most of a new computer a bout a year ago now, but I didn't get a new video card then, I just re-used my old one, a Geforce 560. With the good higher-end CPU I got it ran most games pretty well, until it died. It's really unfortunate that it failed like that, and bad if MS was responsible. But that card clearly seems busted now; it will boot up, but outputs 'snow' all over the picture, and Windows won't properly recognize the card and only runs in a low, 4x3 screen resolution with standard Windows drivers. Yeah, the computer was not usable at all that way.
Fortunately though since this is a modern PC it has on-board graphics, so for a while I used that. Of course that sadly limited me to one monitor, but at least it worked. It seemed okay for single-monitor 2d, but Intel HD Graphics are terrible for 3d and of course there is no multi-monitor support, so this was a very short-term solution. Worse, at least a couple of times my computer randomly rebooted while running off of the onboard graphics, so there seemed to be a stability issue. Maybe I just needed to increase the amount of HDD cache available for graphics, but regardless I wanted something better, or at least more stable.
So, as a short-term interim solution, I got a cheap (like $10 or less) video card from Goodwill and used that for a while. It has multiple outputs on the back but only seems to function with one at a time, so it still didn't get me multi-monitor support. Also it is, again, hopeless at 3d; it's an NVidia 8400 I believe, an old and very low-end thing. At least the computer stopped crashing with this card, though, so that was good.
During this time I kept thinking of what I should do -- do I get a new graphics card? The problem with that is, NVidia is going to finally release a new generation of video cards this year, and it'll probably be in the first half of the year. And worse, graphics card prices have gone INSANE in the past year thanks to cryptocurrency mining and mobile phones using the same RAM chips as video cards! Video cards cost double or triple what they did a year and a half ago, it's a huge problem for all PC gamers. I don't exactly love the idea of paying a highly inflated price for something soon to become outdated. So, I eventually decided not to do that and started looking on ebay.
Time passed, but finally, after almost three months, I actually bid on a graphics card and won it in late February, and it arrived last Friday. For $160 (a price that may seem high, but is quite reasonable for what I got) I got a Geforce GTX 960 4GB, a dual-fan model which is quite quiet thanks to the two large fans. I chose the 960 over a 1060 not so much for price, but for backwards compatibility -- I am still interested in getting a new graphics card whenever NVidia's next generation of cards releases, if I can afford it, and if I ever want my previous computer to get up and running again (which I would like to do for software that only works well on that OS and such) it'd need a video card, and I'd want something better than that 8400 in it. So getting a card with Windows Vista drivers seemed like a good idea, since that computer runs Vista. And after looking it up I found that the current 1000-series of NVidia cards don't have Vista drivers, so I went with a 900 series card since they do.
It's a good card too, significantly better than my old 560; at my monitor's max resolution of 1920x1200 (16:10), the 3d games I've tried so far all run at high and mostly stable framerates with the graphics options set high or max. It's great to finally have a real graphics card again, and to get a nice update too...
On the note of upgrading my computers though, this would be my wishlist:
- For the WinME P4 computer: a Voodoo2 card, because it can't run Glide emulation and thus a bunch of games don't look nearly as good as they should on its GeForce2 card. A GeForce 3 or something might be nice too, to run games like MGS2 at a playable framerate; that game won't work at all on my newer computers, and runs at an unplayable framerate on this one...
- For the Vista computer - a graphics card, or the 960 if I upgrade the newer one. Also it'd need its hard drives and power supply back, which I can do once I buy new ones for the new computer, something I think I will do soon. Also a larger fan for the back of the case would be a good idea, this computer has had heat issues at times. A small CPU upgrade, to the top one that motherboard supports, the Core 2 Quad, would also be interesting, if I could get a better cooler on that motherboard than the stock Intel cooler I have... I'd need to research that.
- And for the new computer, as I've mentioned before a hard drive (HGST perhaps), power supply to free up the old one it's using so it can go back into the older pc, and maybe a new video card whenever they release, depending on how much of an upgrade they are and the price.
Finally though I'd love for MS to stop breaking hardware in their updates! After this happened to me I researched this online, and found plenty of other complaints of people saying that forced MS updates broke their video cards and such. That should never happen.
Fortunately though since this is a modern PC it has on-board graphics, so for a while I used that. Of course that sadly limited me to one monitor, but at least it worked. It seemed okay for single-monitor 2d, but Intel HD Graphics are terrible for 3d and of course there is no multi-monitor support, so this was a very short-term solution. Worse, at least a couple of times my computer randomly rebooted while running off of the onboard graphics, so there seemed to be a stability issue. Maybe I just needed to increase the amount of HDD cache available for graphics, but regardless I wanted something better, or at least more stable.
So, as a short-term interim solution, I got a cheap (like $10 or less) video card from Goodwill and used that for a while. It has multiple outputs on the back but only seems to function with one at a time, so it still didn't get me multi-monitor support. Also it is, again, hopeless at 3d; it's an NVidia 8400 I believe, an old and very low-end thing. At least the computer stopped crashing with this card, though, so that was good.
During this time I kept thinking of what I should do -- do I get a new graphics card? The problem with that is, NVidia is going to finally release a new generation of video cards this year, and it'll probably be in the first half of the year. And worse, graphics card prices have gone INSANE in the past year thanks to cryptocurrency mining and mobile phones using the same RAM chips as video cards! Video cards cost double or triple what they did a year and a half ago, it's a huge problem for all PC gamers. I don't exactly love the idea of paying a highly inflated price for something soon to become outdated. So, I eventually decided not to do that and started looking on ebay.
Time passed, but finally, after almost three months, I actually bid on a graphics card and won it in late February, and it arrived last Friday. For $160 (a price that may seem high, but is quite reasonable for what I got) I got a Geforce GTX 960 4GB, a dual-fan model which is quite quiet thanks to the two large fans. I chose the 960 over a 1060 not so much for price, but for backwards compatibility -- I am still interested in getting a new graphics card whenever NVidia's next generation of cards releases, if I can afford it, and if I ever want my previous computer to get up and running again (which I would like to do for software that only works well on that OS and such) it'd need a video card, and I'd want something better than that 8400 in it. So getting a card with Windows Vista drivers seemed like a good idea, since that computer runs Vista. And after looking it up I found that the current 1000-series of NVidia cards don't have Vista drivers, so I went with a 900 series card since they do.
It's a good card too, significantly better than my old 560; at my monitor's max resolution of 1920x1200 (16:10), the 3d games I've tried so far all run at high and mostly stable framerates with the graphics options set high or max. It's great to finally have a real graphics card again, and to get a nice update too...
On the note of upgrading my computers though, this would be my wishlist:
- For the WinME P4 computer: a Voodoo2 card, because it can't run Glide emulation and thus a bunch of games don't look nearly as good as they should on its GeForce2 card. A GeForce 3 or something might be nice too, to run games like MGS2 at a playable framerate; that game won't work at all on my newer computers, and runs at an unplayable framerate on this one...
- For the Vista computer - a graphics card, or the 960 if I upgrade the newer one. Also it'd need its hard drives and power supply back, which I can do once I buy new ones for the new computer, something I think I will do soon. Also a larger fan for the back of the case would be a good idea, this computer has had heat issues at times. A small CPU upgrade, to the top one that motherboard supports, the Core 2 Quad, would also be interesting, if I could get a better cooler on that motherboard than the stock Intel cooler I have... I'd need to research that.
- And for the new computer, as I've mentioned before a hard drive (HGST perhaps), power supply to free up the old one it's using so it can go back into the older pc, and maybe a new video card whenever they release, depending on how much of an upgrade they are and the price.
Finally though I'd love for MS to stop breaking hardware in their updates! After this happened to me I researched this online, and found plenty of other complaints of people saying that forced MS updates broke their video cards and such. That should never happen.