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Do I have enough Power to juice up my rig?


PaCiNoLiFe

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I'm having a pretty odd problem with an upgrade I just did. I started playing Call of Duty: UO and noticed artifacts flickering on and off which got so bad the game froze. This never happened before the upgrade. So I performed 3dmark05 and 03 and most the time the system would freeze during the tests or score low. I had only a AMD XP 2500+ before with the same 6800GT AGP graphics card and could pass both tests without crashing at all or any artifacts. I upgraded to a AMD ATHLON 64 3700+ San Diego Core with an ASUS A8V MOTHERBOARD which I Know should be way more powerful and shouldn't get as hot as the older cores. I'm not overclocked one bit. The CPU factory fan is mounted correctly and working. The CPU is not overheating much according to the ASUS temperature probe. BIOS is updated current. RAM is 1GB=2sticks identical 512MB Kingston modules. Graphics card is not OC or running hot. Has updated drivers. I did a fresh clean install of Windows XP on my 36GB Western Digital 10,000RPM raptor HDD. I have 450W power supply that came with my Demon case which I think would be enough. Is it possible that a great loss in performance could happen if the generic power supply is not giving off enough power? I used the retail fan with the termal padding they have on the bottom is that efficient enough or should I get artic silver? Hope you guys can help me out. Thanks

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its a driver problem? it has to be the psu! 450watts and it came with the case, wow that sucks. get an ocz powerstream 520.

I really believe also that it is the power supply because I have updated all the drivers to the most current version which were installed on a fresh clean install of windows XP. I'll definitely check out the one you recommended because I shouldn't have left that el cheapo crap PSU in my system in the first place. I did however post 5357 in 3dmark05 when the test actually completed which is promising.

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@ripken204

I checked out the ocz powerstream 520 and was very impressed with all the reviews. What do you feel about the ocz modstream 520 it seems too have good reviews,it's cheaper, plus the blue leds tie better into the theme of my rigs blue led fans.

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its a driver problem? it has to be the psu! 450watts and it came with the case, wow that sucks. get an ocz powerstream 520.

not to be a dick rip, but thats a dumb assumption with the info he listed. could be something as simple as no mobo drivers, bios update, etc. granted while it looks like one thing... it could be a number of other different things.

need more info.

psu specs (12v, 5v, 3.3v amperage for the rails, can be found on the sitcker on the side of the psu)

what you are running off that psu (hdd, vid, fans, mem type etc.)

mobo bios date for that a8v

links for tests (3dmark03/05, etc) showing scores (stock and oc, if applicable)

the more info you give, the more we can help. sucks trying to troubleshoot w/o putting hands on.

the more info you give us, the better we are at helping you.

Edited by Porn Loader
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could be something as simple as no mobo drivers, bios update, etc. granted while it looks like one thing... it could be a number of other different things.

well its not drivers, he said that he has updated all of them. he has a 3700SD and a raptor, those will take alot of power, you should never use a psu that comes with a case if your going to be putting those types of parts in ur rig.

@PaCiNoLiF-at neweeg they are only a 1$ difference, take the powerstream, it is one of the best psu's for an amd system, the powerstream 600 and pc power and cooling 510 being above it

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16817104152

Edited by ripken204
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could be something as simple as no mobo drivers, bios update, etc. granted while it looks like one thing... it could be a number of other different things.

well its not drivers, he said that he has updated all of them. he has a 3700SD and a raptor, those will take alot of power, you should never use a psu that comes with a case if your going to be putting those types of parts in ur rig.

@PaCiNoLiF-at neweeg they are only a 1$ difference, take the powerstream, it is one of the best psu's for an amd system, the powerstream 600 and pc power and cooling 510 being above it

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16817104152

I loaded half-life 2 and doom 3 for testing purposes to see if they crashed just to make sure it wasn't just the call of duty: united offensive crashing and confirmed that they also do crash rather quickly showing nasty artifacts on screen. I have the latest drivers so I know it's not them so I went ahead bought the ocz powerstream 520W to take care of the problem hopefully. If not at least I will fave an awesome power supply.

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I have had problems with PDu's.

My rule of thumb is get the biggest wattage you can.

My PSU fried only this weekend.

I have found that DVD read writers use an increadable amount of power.

I bought a 600w psu for £8.50 from an online shop e buyer shop (clue there!)

:thumbup

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I have had problems with PDu's.

My rule of thumb is get the biggest wattage you can.

My PSU fried only this weekend.

I have found that DVD read writers use an increadable amount of power.

I bought a 600w psu for £8.50 from an online shop e buyer shop (clue there!)

:thumbup

Wattage is only a part of what you look for in a good power supply. To make sure the the system runs as reliable as possible, look at the amperage ratings for the 3.3V, 12V and 5V rails.

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@ripken204

I just wanted to follow up and mention that the ocz powerstream 520w made a hell of a difference. No more artifacts or any of my games crashing in the middle of play. I finally have got to see my 6800GT OC to the speed of the higher priced 6800 Ultra and is quite stable through all the stress tests I performed and even seems like it can go higher but I don't want to push it just yet. The only thing is that my Processor is only stable at 213 * 11 which I'm not too impressed with but I think my RAM is the problem as I have 2 * 512MB of Kingston Valueram. Have any preferences to which RAM I should go with to unlock the full potential of my CPU? Thanks for telling me about the PSU it is absolutely the best I have ever used. :thumbup

Edited by PaCiNoLiFe
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well i am very glad that it works well. how much do you want to pay for ram and how much of it do u want? for 1 gig get the mushkin redline 4000 2x512 but it will run around 180.

I can sell off The Kingston Valueram fairly easily so money shouldnt be an issue. I doubt i'll need anything over a gig for the time being. My board supports Dual-Channel up to DDR400 so I can't use that particular RAM module which sucks. These were two I did some research on tell me what you think.

OCZ EL DDR PC-3200 Dual Channel Platinum Rev 2

991357 eXtreme Performance 1GB (2x512MB) XP3200 2-2-2

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