Fed up with not being able to overclock my radeon 9500 to any reasonable degree (using the rivatuners o/c sliders) , I decided to purchase a more powerful fan unit to facilitate more successful o/c'ing so purchased the Iceberq 4 unit from the overclocking store.
However, on installation, I found that the card started to exhibiting artifacting in all aspects of operation - games exhibited tearing to an alarming degree and normal 2d operations was replete with all sorts of weird pixel badness!
I replaced it with its origional fan but the problems remained - it is not a case of the cards cpu overheating as none of the symptons related to this are present, and I can see no visible damage to the card itself so my question to you good people is twofold - as taking the fan off invalidated the cards warranty, I'm aware that the cost of repair is down to me but does anyone actually repair cards? I ask because a friend says that it makes more sense to give up on it and purchase a new card as repairs for card based products are non existant.
Second point is this - I LOVE my 9500 big time and if it turns out to be beyond repair, I'll have to bite the bullet and purchase a new radeon - ideally, I'd love to pick up a 9800 but lack of wonga prevents this so whats my best bet - go for a 9600 or wait for 9800/9700 prices to fall?
However, on installation, I found that the card started to exhibiting artifacting in all aspects of operation - games exhibited tearing to an alarming degree and normal 2d operations was replete with all sorts of weird pixel badness!
I replaced it with its origional fan but the problems remained - it is not a case of the cards cpu overheating as none of the symptons related to this are present, and I can see no visible damage to the card itself so my question to you good people is twofold - as taking the fan off invalidated the cards warranty, I'm aware that the cost of repair is down to me but does anyone actually repair cards? I ask because a friend says that it makes more sense to give up on it and purchase a new card as repairs for card based products are non existant.
Second point is this - I LOVE my 9500 big time and if it turns out to be beyond repair, I'll have to bite the bullet and purchase a new radeon - ideally, I'd love to pick up a 9800 but lack of wonga prevents this so whats my best bet - go for a 9600 or wait for 9800/9700 prices to fall?