Symptoms of insufficient power with SLI

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Xyrax

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 11, 2004
Messages
297
I wasn't sure which forum was most appropriate for this post since it has to do with PSU's as well as video cards.

My question is, what are the common symptoms when a PSU isn't powerful enough to power a SLI system?

My current rig (in sig) runs every game I throw at it without a problem except Oblivion. In Oblivion, when in full screen, the screen flickers like a strobe light and I get what looks like artifacts. The odd thing is, when I use FRAPS to take a screenshot or make a video, the flicker and artifacts aren't recorded. I scoured the Oblivion forums looking for others with the same symptoms but noone else has reported these symptoms. As long as I run the game in windowed mode, it runs fine. This problem only occurs when I try running the game in full screen mode.

I do have an Enermax Liberty 620 on the way from zipzoomfly so the Neo 480 is only a temporary PSU. I'm just hoping that the problem is simply insufficient power and the Enermax will resolve it.

I have tried numerous driver versions using driver cleaner between each install including the Oblivion optimized drivers released on Wednesday. They have no effect on this issue. Any info is appreciated. Thanks.



[edit] I forgot to mention, The only other items I have in the system is a SB X-Fi platinum, 1x IDE 7200 RPM HDD, 1x SATA HDD, 1x floppy drive, 4x 80mm fans and 1x 90mm fan. No CCFL's.
 
from my experience, insuffieicent PSU results for me is instability in games, and sometimes random reboots during cpu intensive programs
 
Xyrax said:
My current rig (in sig) runs every game I throw at it without a problem except Oblivion. In Oblivion, when in full screen, the screen flickers like a strobe light and I get what looks like artifacts. The odd thing is, when I use FRAPS to take a screenshot or make a video, the flicker and artifacts aren't recorded.
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That sounds like you may have the memory overclocked too much. Is there an nV equivalent of ATITool (corruption checker, among other things)?

 
Thanks for the replies. Currently everything is at stock speeds. No OCing yet. So if the PSu doesn't resolve it, I guess I'll have to look into goign through the RMA proccess for one of the cards.
 
I did some more tests. I ran each card by itself and had no problems. The problem only occurs when both cards are installed AND in dual GPU mode.

Another test I did was dropped the clock frequencies down on the cards while in dual GPU mode and the problem went away as well.

Could this be a sign of insufficient power? Perhaps theres not enough power to run the cards in SLI at stock clock speeds?

If one of the cards is bad, I don't know how to tell which since each one runs flawlessly when alone and only show problems when operating in SLI regardless of which one is in the first PCIe slot.
 
Xyrax said:
I did some more tests. I ran each card by itself and had no problems. The problem only occurs when both cards are installed AND in dual GPU mode.

Another test I did was dropped the clock frequencies down on the cards while in dual GPU mode and the problem went away as well.

Could this be a sign of insufficient power? Perhaps theres not enough power to run the cards in SLI at stock clock speeds?

If one of the cards is bad, I don't know how to tell which since each one runs flawlessly when alone and only show problems when operating in SLI regardless of which one is in the first PCIe slot.
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Hey man....

There are a bunch of threads on forums talking about your problem.
I have it too in BF2. I can alt-tab out of the game and alt-tab back in...and it goes away.
Some people seem to think its a driver issue, but ive tried a ton of versions and nothing fixes it.

Also it only happens in SLi mode....

here's a link

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=12659
 
Fire. Explosions. Sometimes, small mushroom clouds.
 
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