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PSU might be causing problems with my SLI system

N

Numan

Gawd
Joined
Oct 6, 2004
Messages
798
I seem to have an endless serious of problems with my favorite hobby and maybe I should replace it with my second favorite, which is drinking :)

Recently I posted a thread on here about how I upgraded my rig to include the Asus P5N-D (Sorry, I am at work and cannot access some sites. The mobo is the Asus Nforce 750i flavor), Q6600 Intel Quad Core and my upgraded Cooler Master 650w PSU. This was added to 4 gigs of Kingston 667 DDR ram in 4 sticks, an SB Xfi and two BFG 8800GTs. I cannot even find the post here anymore but the initial problem was this crazy “stutter” that I got every few seconds which was dynamic; the screen would pause and the sound with it. I tried many, many, many things and then as a last try for the heck of it I hooked up my old 550w PSU to this rig with only one 8800GT plugged in and the stuttering got worse. My little brain went off as I tried the Cooler Master in this same config and the stuttering was much less. I exchanged the Cooler Master for an OCZ 700w and my stuttering went away in every game! No micro stutter in SLI either with cranked details in UT3, HL2/TF2 and WoW.

So why am I posting this now? Well, this was before my OC attempt. I nudged the volts up a little on everything but the video and the ram to get that Q6600 running at 3Ghz. I also installed 3dMark06 just for show. Well the stuttering is back but just in 3dMark and at one point a BSOD. People are telling me not to worry about 3dMark as it’s just for epeen but my concern is that shouldn’t everything on the system be strong enough to not have issues? Maybe I need a PSU with super strong 12v rails? I didn’t think I would really need something that strong as I kept reading that two 8800GTs use less power then my old 8800GTS 320. Also, while ‘testing’ the stability in Warcraft last night I had parity error and the message on the blue screen didn’t say much more then that. Never seen a blue screen in that format before either. Would my overclock mess up the RAM even though I am not touching the RAM or because of the multiple sticks? I was hoping to try to get to 3.4Ghz although I would take a stable 3.0 if that’s all I can get. As far as the stuttering, all I can think of doing is installing a few more games when I get home (Crysis definitely being one, just to max it out to attempt to recreate the stutter) and go from there. The guy at the store was dead set that my problem wasn’t PSU related and if I go back there he might complain. I am half tempted to tell them I want 4 gigs of 800 DDR2 and a system stable enough to run these games and 3dMark just to make me feel better in the back of my mind.

I apologize for being all over the place with this post but I want to fix my dream desktop :(
 
Set everything back to stock first. This rules out any OC induced instability.

Download Memtest+ V.170, unzip it, burn the ISO file to a CD, and then boot from it, just like you would do with the XP install CD. Let Memtest+ run for at least three hours on each stick of RAM separately. If you start seeing errors, than your RAM is bad.

It could also be a video card problem or port problem. Try running 3DMark on each 8800GT card separately and in different slots.
 
Thank you for the reply. Just for kicks I set it back to stock and ran 3DMark. The stutters are lessened a little and in some instances don't interupt the sound. Also I reinstalled Crysis and it didn't even load with the OC before giving a BSOD. Back to defaults it loaded fine and ran surprisingly well all maxed at 1920x1200. There were moments of that stutter but not too many, nothing near 3DMark.

If this is simply a matter of 3DMark being lame then so be it but if not then I will have to test everything, starting with that ram. I'm just half tempted to get 800DDR2 at this point because of the speed increase hehe
 
The faster RAM won't provide a performance increase. It'll give you some overclocking headroom but no actual performance increase.

But did you run 3DMark on each card separately? Like with the second card physically outside of the system?
 
Hrm not yet. Once I am back from work I will test that. On my old AMD system when I got the two 8800GTs, I only saw the stutter in SLI mode. You could imagine my surprise when I saw the same stutter with just one card. Was talking to a friend last night who was telling me that a 700w PSU with two 12v rails (can't remember the amps it had listed, might of been 18 but don't quote me) should be able to handle what I'm throwing at it. I'm unfamilure with the Intel Quad Cores and the such so I am unsure.
 
Yeah, this is totally NOT a power supply issue. Although it could be a power issue. Could be the DC to DC regulation on the graphics card or for the CPU.
 
Which video driver version are you using???

You dont use ntune do you??:eek:
 
I am using 174.12 drivers and am not using Ntune. I saw a newer beta driver this morning I might try.

If it is a power issue I wouldn't know where to start to fix that besides switch the PSU, which is probably decent :(
 
Keep the 700 W PSU and change to the 175.12 beta drivers.
The 174 series caused some video problems for me in any Unreal based games.

I think it was just a combination of not enough power and drivers.:eek:
 
I think Mr Magoo there was right on the money :)

I installed the day one Nvidia drivers and everything is running better, even 3DMark. Turns out that 3DMark was, well, running dumb although since it was doing the exact same thing as my other programs were doing with the underpowered PSU it naturally made me wonder.
 
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