My two most recent graphics cards have been Radeons. I've owned more Nvidia cards over the years though, 4 I think, including one I bought for my HTPC which has been replaced by my Pi.
So I chickened out on the $.5K new pc ask, and decided to give my aging creaky old system another kick at the can with a new psu and hdd.
Been having intermittent problems with the drive for literally months, and the latest dvd fail (whatever the underlying cause) seems to have pushed it over the edge into a somewhat precipitous decline.
It was still bootable into linux last night, but slow and apt to lock up -- symptoms that have occurred often enough to suspect the issue is mb / psu related. xp hasn't been usable since the last optical drive fail, and for that matter its partition hasn't passed a chkdsk in recovery console even though all other ntfs volumes came up clean. The disk ominously fails all SMART tests** run from linux (smart data shows the drive as ok). FWIW, it's not made any clicking sounds so far.
If it turns out there's been mb damage then I can at least make use of the new components. I'm going up a grade from the usual dirt-cheap, minimally adequate psu to this, which could actually work with a more power-sucking gpu should it come to that and, who knows, may even 'fix' some of the issues with current system.
**Edit: And it just passed a SMART test. Go figger. (still gonna replace it, bought the new drive already)
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"Giant pig hot air balloon crashes after tangling with a cowboy-shaped one"
The beast is in. It is huge and I honestly didn't think it would fit, but it did (NJ). The ginormous cooling fan is really quiet. The PATA dvd burner and floppy drives appear to be working (before, using either made it freeze up). Next step is to connect the old hdd drive and see if that boots. If it does, see if xp works any better (but I think it's damaged), asuming it doesn't, or work well enough, essay a repair install (so I don't have to reinstall drivers & apps). If that fails, reformat the partition and clean install.
I'd never even heard of this, but apparently after formatting a new sata hdd from xp, you need to run an alignment utility (wich explains why I always get 'partition doesn't align with cylinders' reports in fdisk -l).
The utility probably won't work too well on my existing layout (numerous ntfs & ext4 partitions, though the table was made in xp) and there's a risk nuking the data on it, so I won't try it there.
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"Giant pig hot air balloon crashes after tangling with a cowboy-shaped one"
Bloody hell, drive alignment, I remember having to do that years ago with a large drive and XP. It really was years ago, because that's how old XP is!!! Stop using it.
Mainly for a backup mbr pointing to my bootloader. I touch it so rarely I have to dive into the rubbish tip that is my real desktop to find the boot floppy I made last September.
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"Giant pig hot air balloon crashes after tangling with a cowboy-shaped one"
I probably will be getting a legit copy sometime in the next 3-6 months, along with new components. At least I can cross a psu and hdd off the bottom line when it comes to that.
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"Giant pig hot air balloon crashes after tangling with a cowboy-shaped one"
I don't believe you. Not least because there are about a billion better ways to fix a fucked mbr than using a floppy which, by the time you need it again, is invariably de magnetised and useless.