8800GT Underperforming from PSU?

J

johantheolive

n00b
Joined
May 28, 2006
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Finally got around to upgrading my system and, amongst other things, put in an 8800GT (along with an A64 5400+, 2gig ram, new sata HD. only thing left from before is the psu and optical drives). I'm using a 480W power supply that I've had for a good while (ordered it 7/25/2004 7:34:39 PM - Newegg order history FTW). Anyways, I'm running Vista x64 and the experience index is somewhat low (3.6, lowest being the "Graphics" although Gaming grafx is 4.4). Everything else is 5+.

I ran COD4 and got awfuly framerates, between 10 and 14. A tad below playable. My power supply is a Thermaltake with a +12 max of 18A. The system seems stable, and hasn't crashed. I was toying between XP and Vista and, under XP, after installing the gfx drivers I got a message that it had insufficient power and would throttle itself, but the same message never appeared under vista. I'm guessing it's time for some new power, but can anyone confirm? Would like to order one soon so I can see if this thing was worth the moneys. k thx bai:D

EDIT: BTW here are the current idle voltages:
Vcore1: 1.1V Vcore 2: 1.92V
+3.3V: 3.39V +5V: 5.11V
+12V: 12.16V -12V: -16.64 :)eek:)
-5V: -8.78V :)eek:) +5v: 5.05
 
You definitely have the PCI Express power plugged in right (and correctly)? If you have more than one connector, try an alternate one.
 
Blackforge said:
You definitely have the PCI Express power plugged in right (and correctly)? If you have more than one connector, try an alternate one.
Click to expand...

Yes, I have the PCIX power adapter it came with plugged into two molex connectors. I swapped the molex connectors to different lines coming from the psu also, and no different.

The motherboard has a molex connector on it that I don't have plugged in, as the manual said it was only necessary if using SLI. I'll try plugging it in...
 
johantheolive said:
Yes, I have the PCIX power adapter it came with plugged into two molex connectors. I swapped the molex connectors to different lines coming from the psu also, and no different.

The motherboard has a molex connector on it that I don't have plugged in, as the manual said it was only necessary if using SLI. I'll try plugging it in...
Click to expand...

Other than the power supply, the only thing I can think of that would possibly cause a power problem is the slot itself.
 
Blackforge said:
What resolution?
Click to expand...

1360x768. Settings are pretty much max, aside from AA and AF which are off. Framerate varies between 60ish and 100 (I think I have max set as 100). I'm trying out TF2 now...Vista likes to hang on me, and is still giving me crap experience rating. Hanging right now trying to get from steam interface to TF2...argh. Granted, this is vista without any updates at all.
 
I max out CoD4 with my 8800gt at 1440x900 and it runs smooth as butter, you could probably crank it up higher (assuming thats not your native res).
 
My 8800GT runs COD4 w/ max AA/AF @ 1680x1050 with 70-100fps in Vista.
 
I suppose this is moderately off topic, but I don't want to start a new thread.

The board I bought is an nforce 570 sli (AMD) and I found something on google that said the nvidia drivers were bad. Is this true or a known problem that would cause hanging in vista? I don't recall Vista asking for any drivers when I had installed it related to the board. Also, this gfx card is supposed to require over 20A on the 12V rail which I have only 18. I also get the impression that it should run a little better since my settings are kinda low, granted the two posts are peeps running q6600s. I also reran the win experience thingamajig and I know it is not the best gauge of anything, but I still got a 3.3 for 'graphics' after the molex connector. Is their some way to know if my power supply is bottlenecking anything? The voltages I posted in my initial post didn't look so good, but what do I know. I should probably know this stuff as I'm a 'computer' (electrical) engineering tech major. I have to get back to my lab report on resistors capacitors and inductors and their response to frequency changes ugh:(

EDIT: Now that I actually stop and think, my education is coming in handy (i think...) The voltage should be stable at the rail's value, and if the voltage is that far off it's probably straining to pump enough current out. Please tell me I'm not wrong otherwise that's two years down the drain.

DBL EDIT: Hehe...uninstalled the nforce drivers and all my vista indexes are 5.9, aside from my processor which was expected. /me is happy.
 
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