BFG GeForce 6800 GT game problems - PS issue?

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Pantherman

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I have a new BFG 6800 GT in my system. The specs are below. Please don't laugh at the system. Most of the games I have like Mafia, Far Cry, and Black Hawk Down work fine. However, I get flashing graphical glitches in other games like Comanche 4 (freezes after a few seconds of play with wierd sounds), BF: 1942, 3DMark 2001 SE (only in first two benchmarks,sometimes freezes) and BF: Vietnam. I had some of these graphical issues with Far Cry, but when I downclocked my card to the standard 350MHz, the problems in Far Cry went away. The glitches in the other games, however, still remained. My first thought was I had a defective card, but I went ahead and used Driver Cleaner and got rid of old ATI and Nvidia drivers on my system. I think my PS is about 300W, but I know Dell often understates the power of their power supplies. This may simply be a power issue as not enough juice is getting to the card. But why do the other games work so well? I did get some graphical glitches with 3D Mark 2003 in the nature demo, but again when I underclocked to 350 MHz, the problems went away!!! Painkiller and all my other games work great. I also get a gaphical anomaly on the golfer in Tiger Woods 2004, but when I disable the golfer's shadow, it goes away. Anyone have an idea of the problem here? Thanks for the advice!!!!!!
 
Dell Dimension 4550:

Pentium 4 3.06GHz
Seagate 120GB HDD 7200 RPM
1024 PC-2700 DDR-RAM
BFG GeForce 6800 GT Forceware 61.36
16X DVD-ROM
NEC 48X CD-RW
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz
Mitsubishi 22-inch DiamondPro SB-2070
 
the 'recommended' is a 300W PSU, which coming from nvidia means you need a 350W or higher, and if its a 350W , it needs to be a solid one like the antec truepower series with independednt rails
 
Well, I don't know much about Dell, but most OEM dont ever overmanufacture anything... meaning you have just enough juice in your AGP slot for whatever card it shipped with, just enough juice in your PSU for what it shipped with... same goes for cooling. So I would guess your problems are psu and heat releated...
 
ive had oem PS crap out with a ram and extra cdrom drive.

6800gt draw lots of power seriously its like having an extra cpu on your mobo.

with all the other money youve dropped on your system a 50$ power supply would balance much better
 
A dell case is really bad for high end cards, it only has 1 fan, and thats for the CPU , without airflow the card will overheat, aside from consuming all that power
 
Get an Enermax Noisetaker or a Fortron Source... Very solid and at a good price...

Or a PC Power and Cooling if you got the scrill..$$$
 
I'm running my BFG 6800GT on the 200W supply that came with my shuttle, and I haven't had any of the problems you are seeing. What temps are you seeing? And have you tried other driver versions?

To max out the temp on your card, download RTHDRIBL:
http://www.daionet.gr.jp/~masa/rthdribl/

Open up your nvidia display settings, go the temp panel, then start rthdribl. Let it run for a few minutes and see how high your temps get. With the case off I maxed out at about 82C, which seems to be average.

Edit: I hit about 88C with the case on, and it was still working fine.

Check the nvnews.net driver forum:
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=26

There's all kinds of different driver versions for the 6800, so try a couple and see if any of them solve your problems. I'm currently using the 61.71 drivers, and I haven't had any glitches at all.
 
Yea , i would check the power supply. See if you can find another one you can test with.
 
I agree with most of the rest, your seeing a power shortage which is one reason the lower clock rates fix the problem, nvidias 300 watt minimum(which i think is total bs) is for none over clocked chips.. upgrade your power supply and i guarantee the problems fade...
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Inside_line said:
Well, I don't know much about Dell, but most OEM dont ever overmanufacture anything... meaning you have just enough juice in your AGP slot for whatever card it shipped with, just enough juice in your PSU for what it shipped with... same goes for cooling. So I would guess your problems are psu and heat releated...
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This right here my friends is the EXACT reason you never buy dell, gateway, or any other company for a true gaming machine.. build that shit yourself man, and leave the dells for grandmaw :p
 
I too am running a 6800GT in a SFF box, the Fica ice-cube. It only has a 220W power supply, 3.0C, 1 gig ram, 250 gig HD, DVD burner, and a 6800GT OC'd to 420/1150 running 4 days solid without a hitch.

It could be some power supplies are beat, but it's pretty impressive all this power coming out of a shoebox sized computer w/ 220w ps and the 6800GT.
 
I'd say get a noisetaker, I love mine :), make sure it fits in your oem dell case though, unless you want a new one too
 
zombie10k said:
I too am running a 6800GT in a SFF box, the Fica ice-cube. It only has a 220W power supply, 3.0C, 1 gig ram, 250 gig HD, DVD burner, and a 6800GT OC'd to 420/1150 running 4 days solid without a hitch.

It could be some power supplies are beat, but it's pretty impressive all this power coming out of a shoebox sized computer w/ 220w ps and the 6800GT.
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Read on your ps i bet it has a peak output higher than 220... for example an enermax 430 has a peak of 500plus..dont remember the exact number but it was over 500
 
brian, I dunno, have you ever seen a SFF power supply? it doesn't look powerful enough to light up a 60watt light bulb. it's about 1/3 the size of a regular power supply. If it is capable of suppling more than 220w, it would be impressive nonetheless.
 
zombie10k said:
brian, I dunno, have you ever seen a SFF power supply? it doesn't look powerful enough to light up a 60watt light bulb. it's about 1/3 the size of a regular power supply. If it is capable of suppling more than 220w, it would be impressive nonetheless.
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Yes i have.. but obviously its providing more than 220 watt, processor alone is about 80 to 100 watt, not counting the video card hd and the rest,
This explains it, i found this about your PSU...

At 220W, this PSU is the beefiest we've seen in SFF PCs. It's not all about Wattage though, as the rails are also very important. The 12V rail is powered with 12A, whereas past SFFs we've seen were running on 10A.
 
I had the same problem with my card. I'm running an Ennermax 550Watt and I'm getting glitches.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=773898

I chalked my issue up to a defective card. Others are reporting hte same issue with the BFG. The problem lies with the ram overheating.

I RMA'd mine and I'll have the new card tomorrow! I'll let you guys know what happened with the card. Could be some problems with their first batch of cards or something. :confused:

If you read that entire thread I provided you will see that I thought I had the issue fixed several times; but after playing games for a bit the issues came right back at me. BFG Techs and guys in the forum chalk this problem up too much heat on the RAM chips.
 
FlyinBrian said:
Yes i have.. but obviously its providing more than 220 watt, processor alone is about 80 to 100 watt, not counting the video card hd and the rest,
This explains it, i found this about your PSU...

At 220W, this PSU is the beefiest we've seen in SFF PCs. It's not all about Wattage though, as the rails are also very important. The 12V rail is powered with 12A, whereas past SFFs we've seen were running on 10A.


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Avatar29.gif
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that sounds like an old article, Shuttle has had the 250W SFF power supplies out for a while.

no matter what the reasoning, it's impressive the see the card running in a SFF box without issues.
 
Dell machines are fine for new comers to PC and semi-serious gamers. The downside of the machines is the very limited upgrade ability and the cost. I'll list some tid-bits of what I learned from having a Dell machine. Hope it helps.

My Dimension 4400 that is now retired has a 250W rated power supply. Thinking that was a problem I went to Dell's sight and asked around on their forums for some advice. I quickly learned from many many folks that Dell's power supplies (the ones in my class of machine and hopefully yours) are slightly underrated peaking at 345-350W. I went ahead with my 9800Pro installation along with a high speed DVD drive I purchased.

The machine powered 2 CD/DVD drives, 2 hard drives, a floppy, the cooling fan, network, sound and video card (9800Pro) 2x512MB sticks of DDR, and the CPU/MB just fine. For additional cooling of my GPU I removed the closest PCI shim to the AGP slot. This sucked cool air into the machine right over the face of the card. In fact, I do the same thing with my new rig that's in an Antec case. Clean the card more often since sucking fresh air right over it will precipitate dust collecting a lot faster. Keeping my card dust free this way I've had it overclocked quite a bit for over a year now.

As for your artifacting in games, I think some of the previous posters are correct in that it may be your power supply and/or heat problems. It may also be that you're overclocking to much for certain games or texture situations. I noticed my card artifacting at higher than normal clocks in DX9 benchmarks, but not in DX8 benches like '01 and Codecreatures. Until you get better airflow with lower temps, I'd back your card off just a tad. If you can, try that card in another machine with a beefy power supply. That would answer your questions right there.

One last suggestion might be to format that machine. Sounds like you've had a couple different cards in it. After formatting my machine, it was amazing how much better it ran. Not really in games, they performed only a tad better, but desktop functions ran like lightning.

Anyway sorry this was so long. Hopefully something helps ya. Good luck bro.
 
PC Power and cooling makes custome supplies for Dell, go there you cant use most after marked suppies on the Dells as I understand it.
 
[BB] Rick James said:
I had the same problem with my card. I'm running an Ennermax 550Watt and I'm getting glitches.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=773898

I chalked my issue up to a defective card. Others are reporting hte same issue with the BFG. The problem lies with the ram overheating.

I RMA'd mine and I'll have the new card tomorrow! I'll let you guys know what happened with the card. Could be some problems with their first batch of cards or something. :confused:

If you read that entire thread I provided you will see that I thought I had the issue fixed several times; but after playing games for a bit the issues came right back at me. BFG Techs and guys in the forum chalk this problem up too much heat on the RAM chips.
Click to expand...

I thought DDR3 was some of the coolest runnning chips around?? Would the problems go away if you downclock the memory?
 
Inside_line said:
I thought DDR3 was some of the coolest runnning chips around?? Would the problems go away if you downclock the memory?
Click to expand...

I didn't try it. I'm not sure if it was the ram over heating or just the fact I got a bunk card. There have been numerous people in the forums with a defective BFG 6800 GT card though. Maybe just a bad batch or something. :(
 
[BB] Rick James said:
I didn't try it. I'm not sure if it was the ram over heating or just the fact I got a bunk card. There have been numerous people in the forums with a defective BFG 6800 GT card though. Maybe just a bad batch or something. :(
Click to expand...

I think its because a large quantity of people finally got their hands on some new cards with the 6800GT being widely available instead of the trickling we've seen for the past month, and of course that being the case there are going to be more defects reported.
 
tranCendenZ said:
I think its because a large quantity of people finally got their hands on some new cards with the 6800GT being widely available instead of the trickling we've seen for the past month, and of course that being the case there are going to be more defects reported.
Click to expand...

I got my new card from the RMA and it works perfect. It was a defective card.
 
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