Will a bent fan on my video card slow down my game graphics, or should I buy a more advanced card?

My computer posses the following hardware: AMD Sempron 2400+, 768 MB of SDRAM and an 8X AGP slot, a 450 watt power supply. Just recently the fan on my previous Nvidia 2MX burnt out. To replace it, I purchased an Nvidia FX 5500 256 MB video card (Im thinking of exchaning it for a EVGA e-GeForce 7600GT AGP8X Superclocked 512MB Video Card). The 5500 did not live up to its potential. Games like Civ IV, and Rome Total War, did not work (they froze up). After doing everything I could do, I recognized that the video card fan did not work. I removed the card and noticed that the fan was bent. I was wondering if that could have been the cause of all my problems, or is the card, in general, a piece of junk.



Thank you for you advice and help.|||Rome Total War, and Civ IV should have ran just fine on any of those video cards..

But if the fan is not working, or is bent, your video card will overheat. That would cause the lock up.



If you can replace your video card fan, that may help. But if you have been running the video card for quite awhile with a broken fan, then your card may be pretty much fried by now.|||buy a better card|||if the fan dont work at all, you can burn up the graphics card, i would reccomend getting a new one.|||All the other answers are good. But let me add this: If you expect to play PC games in the future that might require more you should look at getting a new system. Especially because your graphics card still uses an AGP slot. The trends now are starting to favor PCI-E slots for graphics cards. But I think you should be good if you get a new graphics card.|||I have a FX5500 and its way to slow for most games that I want to play. The fan not working would not have helped as it would be running hot but there was probably enough air moving in your case to keep it from overheating.



If you have the money get a new card and maybe some extra RAM if you can afford it / have the slots for it.



bye for now|||Im more of a fan of the ATI Radeon X series. But the 7600 GT is pretty good card also. But a bent fan shouldnt cause too much performance loss, just a hotter GPU|||A bent fan won't make the card run more slowly, but might allow more heat to build up. But I can't imagine it being a problem unless your box is shut in a closet.



A better card is what you need.|||It needs a fan.. Heat can cause many issues.