Problems with 9800m GS

Hello guys, I have some questions for you, hope you can help me out.

I have an Asus G50VT-X5. I bought it on 2009, and it has been a great laptop so far, except that a few days ago while playing Company of Heroes, the game crashed and got a bluescreen. On restart, I notice there were a bunch of odd horizontal lines (looked like dots) flasing across the screen randomly. Normaly, I panicked, this being the first time it happens to me. It took longer than usual to load, I put my password to log onto my session and it freezed, screen went black and had to restart it again. This time I went to Safe Mode and checked the Device Manager, and noticed the GPU -9800m GS- had a (!) sign next to it. I opened it and there was an error message Code 43. I googled it to see what it meant, and most of the times it meant...hardware damage. Le sigh.

Still I wasnt ready to give up so I tried uninstalling the drivers and trying different ones. I tried 5 drivers

186.03
195.62
197.16
258.96
260.99

And everytime I restarted the computer the same thing happened: odd lines across the screen and crash. I accepted the fact that my GPU was kaput.

Im going to buy a new GPU and that is were I need help. Since the 9800m GS is an outdated model, I cant find where to buy it on the internet. I live in Venezuela and my mother is on vacations on the U.S so she is going to bring it home. But, she wont go looking around computer stores to buy a GPU, so she told me to find it on the internet and then have it shipped to her home in the U.S. I tried looking for the 9800m GS on Amazon and Bestbuy and couldnt find it. I was hoping you guys could tell me which GPU I could buy that works on my G50VT-X5 that is equal or better than my 9800m GS. (replacing the laptop entirelly is out of the question, not enough $$$)

Thanks.

 

GTX 260M from asus g51 is a possible upgrade route to go, there are quite some g50vt owners upgraded their 9800M gs to GTX 260M.

Performance gain from 9800M gs to 260M isn't that great, but it is your best option. And if I am not mistaken, you can only take 260M from g51 models, not g71 models as the 260M in them are slightly different.

Be warned, the 260M will run quite hot in G50, from what I have seen, people are experiencing 90 C+ degrees with 260M after the upgrade. So you might want to do a couple of cooling mods(replacing factory fan, applying quality thermal paste, drilling holes in the backpanel, getting a good cooler, undervolting CPU/GPU etc) to keep it running in safe zone. Good luck!

 

Ebay has many of them.
Try a 260m (get the asus version), like this:
Asus G50VT G60VX Nvidia GTX 260M 1GB MXM VGA Card | eBay

9800m GS:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Nvidia-...raphics_Video_TV_Cards_TW&hash=item256844adf3

 

other option is to try the baking method in the oven (not like one poor sod who done it in his microwave DOH!) lol.
this will give you a few more weeks or months as what it does is melts the soulder and they reconnect so the card works again.

if you could post a picture of the screen it would help us clarify its a dead card.is your screen like the attached.

9800gts to a 260gtx will see maybe 2000 higher score in 3dmark06
my 9800gt died in march and i get about 1100 more with a 260gtx