Time to upgrade or replace computer?

I have a fairly powerful/quick computer, however, some of my more intensive image programs sometimes overwhelmed the integrated graphics, especially Perfect Effects 9.5; thus, I went on the hunt for a better/quicker video-card.

I listened to someone else who pointed me in the direction of a EVGA Nvidia card, GEFORCE GT 730 2GB GDDR5; this card is fan cooled.

This new card cured all of my image editing problems; however, Nvidia/EVGA has a LOT of problems with driver compatibility and trouble-free dependability.

I won't go into all of the headaches and heartaches I have endured in trying to get this situation resolved until I have just threw up my hands in despair.

A gentleman who described the same situation that I have been experiencing told me that he replaced his troublesome EVGA card with an AMD Radeon and his system has been rock solid ever since.

Needless to say, I will never be guilty of buying another nvidia EVGA product and am now saving my pennies toward an AMD.

Thanks so much for providing the model name/number of the card you chose; please keep us updated on how well it performs.


By the way, I am no gamer either.

I have Windows 7

I believe I got a defective card and EVGA just does not want to do anything about it; their "customer support ticket" system is nothing but a delaying action to keep you stalled until the 30-day return it to vendor period expires.

After wasting time and effort for weeks, troubleshooting and trying various different drivers, they informed me that, if I wanted a replacement card, I would first have to pay them full MSRP and they would send me another card; I was to then return my defective card > at my expense < and they would then "test" it to see if it was actually defective, at which point they would, completely at their discretion, either return to me the defective card or refund me the money I had to pay for this second card --- ridiculous.

The problem this card is having is random screen blackouts; I can be doing nothing more than reading a web-page and all of a sudden the screen will go black for several seconds duration; when the screen reappears, I get a message saying nvidia driver version xxx stopped working and has recovered.

Sometimes one of these blackouts will occur right in the middle of a very work intensive image editing; I will click "save as", the save as box will appear, and before I can get "save" clicked, the screen will blackout, the program will shut down, and all my efforts are lost; it makes one quite paranoid.

I might edit and save fifty images without this happening, and then it happen twice in a row; likewise, I might go two days without a single blackout and then the next day it blackout ten times; completely random and very erratic in it's behavior.


It is quite enlightening to go to Amazon and read all of the one star reviews.



If there is a silver lining to any of this, at least I can use Perfect Effects without it crashing and I now know more about the dark and secret places within a computer system than I ever thought I would.  

Thanks so much.

The model description of your card almost mirrors that of the one I have, except that your's is AMD and mine is nvidia.

If you don't mind my asking, did you buy online and if so where ?

What type and how many video ports/outlets does it have ?

How many monitors does it support ?


One thing I like about the card I have is that it has three video ports; HDMI, DVI(24+1), and good old VGA; I like to have a VGA port on account of so many older monitors only have a VGA connection.

I may try and get the exact same card as you.

Thanks for providing the details.

On EDIT :  I just noticed that you said Windows drivers and then "installation to Linux"; do you have Windows AND Linux BOTH on the same machine; that would be nice to have.