Hardly a year goes by without something seeminly going wrong with my PC.

Last week the graphics card died a death - nice corrupted graphics on the bios screen a sure fire sign.    It worked fine when cool, but 2 mins after booting, corruption occurred.    It wasn’t cooling as the fans were running fine..    So bye bye Nvidia 8800GTS to the graphics card maker in the sky (it was 2 months out of warranty typically!).

Now without a main  graphics card - it left me with research to do - I used tomshardware.com to look at which card would be best for the money, in combination with the 3 online component retailers in the UK that I trusted.    I ended up ordering a Zoltan Nvidia GTX 260 with 896Mb of graphics memory- for£135 including delivery charges.    I chose Nvidia over ATI due to previous bad experiences with ATI cards and drivers prior to me having the 8800 card from Nvidia - and overall being happier with the Nvidia 8800 than any previous graphics card.

When the card arrived, I was frankly amazed - it was a bigger physical footprint than the old 8800 - in fact it took difficultie and alignment to actually get it in the slot (I think I have 2mm clearance!).    I  also needed 2 PCI X addtional power connectors compared to the one before - this is the hurt fingers incident.     For PC builders thinking of using stanley knifes to cut cable ties, experience and a bandaged up thumb now tells me snips are the way to go.

Overall, I’m totally happy with the new graphics card - its a bit quieter than the old 8800 - and a lot more powerful - gaming using it is quicker.     And it cost considerably less than the 8800 did at the time I purchased it as always.