This is going to be a review of sorts, about graphics cards. Last week, my beloved Nvidia GTX 660 died in a sea of black screens and flashing lines. I had bought this card years ago and it has served me well, playing every game in ultra settings with more than 60 fps. But I knew something was wrong when the driver kept crashing in a few games. I tried deleting the old driver and installing the newest and even rolling back to previous driver. The problem persisted, so I left it as it only happened once in a while. However, one stormy night, last Thursday was the finishing move. I was playing a bit of Skyrim, happily adventuring my way through the lands, when the screen flashed black. It recovered so I continued to play, but a few seconds later it happened again, and again, and again. Then my whole computer crashed.
I left it for the night, too tired to fix it. When the morning came, I got up early to spend the day fixing it, but everything I tried didn't work. I even resorted to reinstalling windows to see if there was a problem there. But still that didn't work. It had got so bad, my computer couldn't even turn on without the card crashing and locking up. On Saturday I through the towel in, and decided to buy a new card. I sang a goodbye song as I threw my card away, realising I now had to dish out another £200 for a new card. I got online and searched about, eventually falling for the GTX 980.
This card is brilliant, a huge upgrade. Being the 900 series, it is based on the new maxwell architecture form Nvidia, and it is a beast of a card. I bought Gigabytes overclocked version, with windforce technology, so the cooling is better than ever. It boasts three fans and huge heat sinks all over it. The performance is top class, playing all my games on ultra over 100 fps. The card comes with a piece of software called Gigabyte guru which helps me keep track on it's temperature and the power it is giving out. It also allows me to fiddle with the overclocked settings, but as it is already overclocked I don't need to touch that. It is the best card I've had and I recommend it for anyone looking for a new card... and who also has £400 to drop :)
P.S Now my PC is fixed I'll be blogging again, sorry for the dry couple of days.