Graphics Card Failures, whee!

[Vivi Hill]

So yeah, my graphics card is having some problems. Computer randomly stalling, TF2 and other games glitching out after 10 or so minutes of playing... It doesn't look good for my card. Obviously I don't have proof it's the graphics and not anything else, but it seems like the most likely scenario and I had wanted an upgrade for my 280 eventually.

Any suggestions for cards I should get? I am reallllly stingy, so cheap is better, but I also would like something that's at least a slight upgrade from the 280. Also, I will probably not be in TF2 very much, which is good anyway as I have work to do!

EDIT: I may also just want to wait until July to get a new card. I'm going to be out of the country mid-may to june anyway, and I should work on finishing schoolwork until then too.

[Rologton]

Lol, just in time for finals coming up. (Mine start next a Teusday! D: )

[Prof_Schwartz]

I've had my computer for almost 2 years, and my graphics card (i think) is crapping out on me too. My craptop will overheat and just randomly shut off whenever i play tf2 for too long. Any idea on what could be wrong?

[Vivi Hill]

So today it decided to play nice and not crash. It seems like it has mood swings.

[Prof_Schwartz]

So today it decided to play nice and not crash. It seems like it has mood swings.

Mine does the same

[Shotgunbob]

I have a GTX 550 Ti, very affordable and has decent performance.

I think the GTX 560 Ti is on sale right now on Newegg if you want to spend an extra $20-$30

[Prof_Schwartz]

my Asus laptop has an Nvidia geforce GTS 360M in it, and i've had it for almost 2 years. i think its crapping out on me =\

[medkitz]

my Asus laptop has an Nvidia geforce GTS 360M in it, and i've had it for almost 2 years. i think its crapping out on me =\

i used an old nvidia card on my pc, so i switched to a gtx 570 for 200 (family connections) ... .Tf2 is stupidly smooth 98% of the time

[Vivi Hill]

I haven't tested enough to be sure it works, but I installed NVIDIA System Tools today and set it up to manually put my graphics card fan to 85% whenever playing tf2 (regardless of temperature), and I did not crash during a full tf2 session.

I'll need to spend more time to see if it truly has solved the problem, but maybe it'll help others. Once you install the system tools it adds a "Performance" tab to your NVIDIA Settings panel with various things. I set up a profile rule to spin up the fan when I start tf2 and it worked nicely.