I was going to update my bloig more regularly, but I ran into a problem.
The other day, the cooling fan on my GeForce Ti4400 (video card) lost a blade. I’m not sure if it is edge driven or just off balance, but it doesn’t turn without a flick start now. The fan is will integrated, so I don’t think I’ll be able to replace it. Time to go looking for new cards. (I could probably run the computer anyway without wrecking the main board, but I don’t really want molten video card dripping on the motherboard.)
It took me several hours to find a performance chart showing the Ti4400’s performance against other video chipsets. Although the Ti4400 is no longer high-end (or even made), my first planned chipset was actually slower. Kind of odd, considering how long ago I bought this card. Since this is a Micro ATX case with a modest (300W) power supply, plan B is the Geforce 5700 chipset. All cards based on it seem to support a maximum digital resolution of 1600×1200. This is a problem for people like me who use widescreen panels — 1680×1050.
It will probably work, right? But it doesn’t hurt to ask. So I send off an email to MSI, who made the last card. A few hours later, I realize MSI’s card broke because of a $2 piece I can’t fix, so I send off an email to eVGA, too.
Neither has replied yet.
I sincerely hope I never work for a company so large that we ignore sales enquiries.