VOGONS


First post, by Xenphor

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I bought a leadtek geforce 4 ti 4800se and it produces a blurry image at resolutions over 800x600. This happens in both windows 98 and linux, even if I use a dvi-i to vga adapter. Using digital output over dvi seems to be fine at least. Is this a sign that the card is going to die soon or is there a way to fix it? There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the board itself like leaking capacitors.

I have an asus geforce 4 ti 4800se that I've used with the same system that doesn't have the issue.

Reply 2 of 6, by appiah4

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Shitty RAMDAC was somerhing very common in dx8 and earlier nvidia cards.

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Reply 3 of 6, by Xenphor

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The Serpent Rider wrote:

Cable.

You mean there's something wrong with the cable? It's the same vga cable I use with the other geforce 4 and it's fine above 800x600.

appiah4 wrote:

Shitty RAMDAC was somerhing very common in dx8 and earlier nvidia cards.

But what would dx8 have to do with it? It's fuzzy and blurry just sitting at the desktop, even at 1024x768. I don't seem to recall that being a problem even with an nvidia tnt I had.

Reply 5 of 6, by darry

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If you need to have VGA output, an active DVI to VGA converter (from the likes of Gefen , Atlona or Extron) could be an option . That being said, the card is probably fine . Like the previous posters said, VGA output quality tended to be iffy on cards of the era, especially Nvidia based ones .

Reply 6 of 6, by Xenphor

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Using dvi-d seems to mess with the refresh rate of games on my display so I don't think using an active converter would help much if it's still using the digital signal.

So if I want to increase the longevity of the asus 4800se I have, what could I do? Is cooling an issue on these cards? The leadtek version has a fairly massive heatsink on it that covers a large amount of the card as well as the back; however, the asus model only has a small heatsink centered on the gpu. Would it be worth while to buy some smaller heatsinks to put on other parts of the card that are not covered?

I would try to monitor the card's temperature in Windows but I don't think it has any sensors on it.