having trouble with 8800gtx

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C1iffBurton

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Sep 18, 2008
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bought a computer from my buddy from his left over parts, info on comp in sig.
anyhow i got it home played warhammer for maybe week and a half to 2 weeks and then it started to glitch up on the screen, i was NOT OCing the card or the chip at all...i have 2 80mm fans and 2 120mm fans in the case anyhow was playing one day and the screen started to shutter up and then it just went black, i rebooted it and worked good for like 15 minutes then did it again, ive booted it up multiple times and gotten all the way to desktop and without being under any load was just searching the internet and it would do it then, now it will not even boot into the desktop before the screen just goes black on it and if it does make it to desktop the default background is set and around the clouds and hills its all pink and black

not sure if its not getting enough power to the video card or not cuz the minimum is 450watts, and when we were putting all the parts together it wouldnt even boot with 1 power cord in the card so we had to go with two and one of the plugs only had 3 prongs in it instead of the usual 4, the sticker on the front of the video card you cant even tell what brand it is from (EVGA, BFG, ect.) and the sticker is bubbling up liek it had gotten hot and caused that....i dont see how it worked just fine for a week perfectly and then just started to go south

not sure if i should try a new power plug going to the video card or if i needa try a new larger power supply or if i need to try to get a friend to stick the 8800gtx into one of his spare comps to see if it works in there or if i needa try a new card in my comp to see if its something to do with my end not liking the card

any advice on what to do would be much appreciated guys
 
C1iffBurton said:
not sure if its not getting enough power to the video card or not cuz the minimum is 450watts, and when we were putting all the parts together it wouldnt even boot with 1 power cord in the card so we had to go with two and one of the plugs only had 3 prongs in it instead of the usual 4
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I think that may be your problem. The 8800GTX requires both 6-pin power connectors to be plugged in to work properly. When you say 3 prongs instead of 4, I wonder what the heck you plugged in there. I don't even know what an Orion 450W is (it's not on newegg at all) so I would suggest getting a better quality PSU like a Corsair 550VX. I hope you haven't fried the 8800GTX by plugging something improper into it; if it behaves the same way in another system with an appropriate PSU, then the card is probably toast.
 
thanks for the help, i was thinking it was prob the psu but wanted someone elses opinion...like i said sometimes it will boot up and others it wont, so makes me think its not getting enough power cuz usually if it does boot up normal it will take like a couple minutes then itll go bad


when i say 3 prongs i mean not the end that plugs into the card itself but i had like lil adapters that swap it from the regular looking power connector the the video card connector...there are 4 prongs or whatever and 1 was missing but dont think that matters to much since it was already working before hand but it could have something to do with it...and if the card would be fried id guess that you wouldnt get any video at all

i think the psu is just a generic brand cuz he got it just to put back in the computer to get it running and i think he was running something way weaker on graphics end and didnt need a whole lot then i wanted to get the 8800 in it when i bought it from him so we just worked with it but i dont know why it would work sometimes and not others or why it would slowly start to work less and less
but im not ruling anything out...ill try to get a friend to stick it in there computer to see if it works or not
 
well went to a buddies house today and and when he stuck it in his computer it wouldnt even display anything at all, but his computers act funny to add in stuff for some reason

i came back home and put it back in the computer and booted into safe mood and unistalled the drivers for it then booted into regular mode and installed drivers and when i restarted it got to the first windows screen then was glitchy again beyond recognition

im out of idea for this other than new psu that can actually get a good amount of power to it, would i just be better off and getting a new vid card or get a new power supply first
 
There is a good chance you fried the card using it without the proper power for all this time.
 
The PSU has been greatly overtaxed and has almost certainly produced harmful DC ripple as a result, which may have damaged or killed outright any and all components in your system.

Moral of the story: don't cheap out on the PSU. Ever. Get a reputable brand, with sufficient 12v amperage available.
 
well i wouldnt guess the entire system is fried since it boots and works just fine other than the video card

looks like ill try to get a good psu and another vid card

any recommendations, prob spend $100 for the psu and up to $150 for a vid card...i dont play super new games but i will hopefully be playing darkfall when it comes out, i dont mind playing my games on medium or low settings as i usually turn them down for better performance over quality

thanks for the help guys
 
His video card isn't neccessarily dead yet. I'd try with a better PSU, and then see what happens.
 
yea i plan to get a bigger psu and see if thats it or not, either way id rather have the piece of mind instead of this generic crappo psu

thanks for the info guys, was thinking between the 9800gtx and i wanna say the 4850 already, never done the ati side of things but friends have and they have mixed thoughts on it
 
also might i mention that my buddy didnt know what size psu he had but he said he doubted it was bigger than a 450watt which is minimum, he prob actually had a 400 watt and it wouldnt even get enough power to the card to make his display do anything

im going to get a new power supply within the next week hopefully and then i will test to see if the card is toast or not and get a new card if need be
 
you friend obviously had a PSU that could run the 8800. You should FIRST borrow it from him and make sure the card isn't the problem THEN spend your own money on a new one.
 
yea im going to go ahead and get a good quality psu prob the corsair 550vx like stated above stick it in and see what happens, if it still acts up then ill get a vid card and be done with it
 
ive been out of the loop for a little while now on computer stuff, prob lets say 2 years so im playing catchup big time on trying to understand what all has happened in that time frame

my mobo is a pci-e x16 mobo, there arent many cards on new egg under that, most of them are all pci-e 2.0 x16, what exactly is the difference and what happens if u run a 2.0 x16 card in a mobo that supports x16 instead of the 2.0 x16?
thanks for inlightening me
 
There isnt really any difference they both run on the x16 slot but if you plug a pci-e 2.0 x16 graphic card into a pci-e x16 the card wont run on its full potential. And also i suggest u get a new psu first rather than spend money on a new card also because u have a 8800GTX that might be working perfectly fine.
 
jxaznxk said:
There isnt really any difference they both run on the x16 slot but if you plug a pci-e 2.0 x16 graphic card into a pci-e x16 the card wont run on its full potential. And also i suggest u get a new psu first rather than spend money on a new card also because u have a 8800GTX that might be working perfectly fine.
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Not necessarily true.

PCIe 2.0 runs at 2x the poling rate for PCIe 1.0 (like AGP 8x runs at 2x the poling rate of AGP 4x).

As of right now, however, only multi-GPU PCIe 2.0 native cards (like the 4870X2) use enough bandwidth that running them on a 16x PCIe 1.0 slot to decrease performance, and even then you're looking at maybe a 10% drop.

Any of the newer single GPU cards, with the possible exception of the GTX 280, run at full speed in a 16x PCIe 1.0 slot.

You should definitely replace the PSU first and see if the GTX is still working, though.
 
yea thats what i plan to do is just get a psu first and see how she does and then go from there...thanks for clearing the pci-e 2.0 question up
 
is this a decent enough psu to push what i need, was going to try to get one overnighted or two dayed to me to see if i can get the comp working for a lan party we got on saturday evening and i came across this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371015

says it has 3 +12V rails, all of which i think are 22amps
i read a big post that said 1 rail is better than 2 but not sure of 3 rails
should i stick with the corsair 550vx or go with this antec, i thought antec was a good brand back in the day, i never had a problem with them but that was many years ago
plus there is a pretty good price cut on that thing
 
C1iffBurton said:
is this a decent enough psu to push what i need, was going to try to get one overnighted or two dayed to me to see if i can get the comp working for a lan party we got on saturday evening and i came across this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371015

says it has 3 +12V rails, all of which i think are 22amps
i read a big post that said 1 rail is better than 2 but not sure of 3 rails
should i stick with the corsair 550vx or go with this antec, i thought antec was a good brand back in the day, i never had a problem with them but that was many years ago
plus there is a pretty good price cut on that thing
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thats a great deal for that psu. here is a review of it:

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story&reid=110
 
since my 8800gtx takes 26amps how would i wire that psu up to get the 26amps total since 2 of the rails are 22amps and 1 is at 25amps? or u jsut plug in 2 of the rails to it and be done with it or am i overthinking this thing to much?
and that was a good review from jonny guru also
 
i just put that psu on order and got it coming overnight to me, it was still cheaper with the overnight shipping than the corsair 550vx was with its MIR before the shipping was brought in

hopefully this psu can push the 8800gtx if its not a fried card and if it is then ill find a new vid card for it
 
I hope that power supply works out for you. Usually antec power supplies are okay. I personally only buy Corsair or occasionally silverstone since I've only had good experiences with them and people always highly recommend them. As a general rule however, NEVER EVER EVER be cheap or try to save a few bucks buying a cheaper power supply. Just absolutely not worth the risk. I learned this the hard way several years ago.


It's too bad I didn't see this thread sooner. I have a nice Silverstone power supply that's just sitting around not being used. 560 watts with a nice single rail of something like 40 amps. I used it to power a 8800 ultra for over a year with zero problems. I probably would of given it to you for free if you paid shipping. Anyway, good luck.
 
its no biggy johnny78, i use to buy antec power supplies back in the day alot when building my computers and building others but ive been out of the loop like 2 or 3 years now on computer stuff and all these new names are unfamiliar to me, yea i think my friend i bought this computer from just bought the cheapest power supply he could find just to say it had one, needless to say when i went to get the computer from him i only paid half of what he wanted at that time, i got the comp home and 2 weeks later video card started pooping out on me and i havent spoken to him since i picked it up so i will prob withhold the other half and tell him since he screwed me on that psu crap he bought i will only pay him half of the second half since i had to get a new psu and possibly a new video card

i read the full review on jonnyguru on that antec psu and he had very good things to say about it, like i said ive been out of the loop so long that im just unsure how to wire it up to the video card, since it takes 26amps for the card and 2 of the rails are 22amps and the other is 25amps...do i have to run 2 of the rails to the card and also maybe split off and stick a fan and a harddrive on one and a fan or two and a dvd drive on the other rail...does that sound right?
 
C1iffBurton said:
i read the full review on jonnyguru on that antec psu and he had very good things to say about it, like i said ive been out of the loop so long that im just unsure how to wire it up to the video card, since it takes 26amps for the card and 2 of the rails are 22amps and the other is 25amps...do i have to run 2 of the rails to the card and also maybe split off and stick a fan and a harddrive on one and a fan or two and a dvd drive on the other rail...does that sound right?
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It's very straight forward. That Antec you ordered has 2 pci-express 6 pin connectors that can only go to your video card. You cannot connect them anywhere else. (Actually one of your pins will be a 6pin +2 which if you ever upgrade to say a GTX280 or 4870X2 then you would need one 6 pin connector and one 8 pin connector. Since your 8800 GTX only uses 2 6 pins you simply don't connect the extra 2 pins.)

If your power supply was modular, I would recommend that you make sure that each PCI-Express connector was coming from a different rail (that's why some people prefer single rail since this simplifies things a little) however since your power is not modular you don't need to worry about that since it should already be wired so that each PCI-E connector is coming from a separate rail. Other than that, you simply connect everything as usual.
 
alrite sounds good, thanks for the help, hope she all goes together right and the card isnt toast since it still does give display

do vid cards still work when they dont get there full amps they need?
 
C1iffBurton said:
alrite sounds good, thanks for the help, hope she all goes together right and the card isnt toast since it still does give display

do vid cards still work when they dont get there full amps they need?
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most of them will give you a warning when they are not receiving enough power. either in the initial boot screen or as a windows informational box.
 
only reason i ask is cuz im sure that pos orion 450 watt psu i got now ima bet this $100 bill in my wallet that it doesnt even have 26amps for the entire thing not to mention extra to cover the other stuff

but i didnt recieve any warning ever that said anything when the computer was working
just didnt know if it would still run the card but would just be slow or would make the card unstable and that is why it wont boot up without glitching now
 
It could very well make it unstable. As has already been said numerous times, change out your PSU and see if the problem persists. If it does, RMA the card. I think you said you bought it from a friend? Have them contact EVGA and get an RMA request going. They'll replace it if your friend registered the card within 30 days of purchase -- all 8, 9, and GTX 2xx series cards from EVGA have a lifetime warranty.
 
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