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Vertigopills

Vertigopills

New Member
I have the ATI mobility Radeon 9600/9700 chip on my laptop (e-machine AMD Athlon 1.6-2.0GHz 64-bit). Its 5 years old and now I'm encountering graphic problems.

Basically, there is a strange pixelation quilt-like pattern on the screen that shouldn't be there. I tried a system restore, no dice. I uninstalled the video card driver and downloaded a new one from ATI's website, no dice. I connected an external monitor to see if the same graphic problems would display and they did, so I don't think its the monitor.

Do you think I need a new card? Is it worth paying labor for someone to solder on another used card or should I get a new system altogether? I payed about $1200 for it, 5 years ago. It freezes sometimes when I run CS:S or other graphic intensive programs, and I've been pushing the limit on the 60GB hard drive for sometime lol.

I found an AGP(sp?) card on Ebay for $30, I'm guessing installation would run around $50-70+? Not sure if its worth it though... I customized a nice desktop setup on HPs website for about $730, but I'm waiting on statements from my dental insurance to find out how much I'll have to pay for some fillings I had recently, otherwise I can afford to buy that system.

Thoughts?
 
that system is quite outdated so i would rather just get a new one. you can buy laptops that are better than yours at great prices now. do you do any gaming or are you just doing simple applications?
 
I do pretty much everything. Actually, I want to move to a desktop since they are cheaper and simpler, I've never really taken my laptop out enough to justify having one and its a pretty bulky laptop to carry around anyways: http://www.notebookreview.com/reviews/default.asp?productReviewID=1391&productfamilyID=371&brandID=5

Also laptops seem to have more performance and cooling problems than desktops, and I'm looking for something with great performance in graphics and sound. I'm an audiophile and I love playing games too.

I customized a pretty nice desktop on the HP website tipping in @ $790 (including monitor), might go with that. What sort of experience have you had with HP desktops? Have computer speakers advanced much over the years or could I find a better deal on some older performance speakers than newer economy speakers?
 
Wow the difference between a 2.6Ghz AMD Athlon X4 620 quad processor and a 2.8Ghz 630 is $70!! Is it worth an extra $70 for the extra .2Ghz? I'll be doing some gaming like COD4, nothing extreme though and I don't care too much about awesome graphics I just want the game to run haha. Would it be wise to save the $70 and just upgrade the graphx card from a 512MB ATI Radeon to a 1GB ATI Radeon for $60 instead? Doubling the speed of the graphx card rather than nudging speed of the CPU, sounds like a better idea.

This is what I'm considering:

Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
AMD Athlon(TM) X4 620 quad-core processor [2.6GHz, 2MB L2, up to 4000MT/s bus]
4GB DDR3-1066MHz SDRAM [2 DIMMs]
FREE UPGRADE! 500GB 7200 rpm SATA 3Gb/s hard drive from 320GB
1GB ATI Radeon HD 4650 [DVI, HDMI, VGA]
LightScribe 16X max. DVD+/-R/RW SuperMulti drive
Integrated 10/100/1000 (Gigabit) Ethernet, No wireless LAN
15-in-1 memory card reader, 2 USB, audio
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio
HP multimedia keyboard and HP optical mouse
Microsoft(R) Works 9.0
HP w1858 18.5-inch 16:9 HD Ready Widescreen Monitor

$769.98 w/free shipping

Thoughts?
 
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