? about my new GF 5900XT

[LS1ZX10R]

Hi all, Just replaced my 4200ti with a BFG 5900 XT. So far it seems to be a good , not great card. I have a p4 1.5 with 640megs of pc133 ram, two hard drives, two seperate cd-rom drives (ones a burner) an Audigy 2 SC, two fans and a led light bar. Reason I mention all this is when I boot up my pc, NVidia pops up a message stating that my Vid card has been reset to lower settings because it's not getting sufficent power? My case is an Antec Lanboy with a 350 watt ps. I just bought the case awhile ago and don't really want to spend more money on a new ps. Is the message from the card worth worrying about. My score on 3d mark was 5092. Not bad I guess.

 

[Dman877]

You have the molex connector plugged in to the card right? Otherwise try upgradeing the psu, a cheap 350 might have problems with that card. Also, the 1.5 P4 is severely limiting your 3d performance.

 

[vshah]

yeah, what dman said. check the molex, maybe you need a new psu. and your 133 ram is slowing you down a lot.

Welcome to Anandtech

-Vivan

 

[LS1ZX10R]

Originally posted by: vshah
yeah, what dman said. check the molex, maybe you need a new psu. and your 133 ram is slowing you down a lot.

Welcome to Anandtech

-Vivan

Can I upgrade my ram to a faster type using the same mobo?
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???

 

[Pete]

a p4 1.5 with 640megs of pc133 ram
That CPU is completely crippling your 5900XT. You really need to slap a faster CPU in there to let the 5900XT stretch its legs compared to your 4200. Is your memory PC133 or DDR266? Both are slow compared to the current DDR400 top-line spec, but PC133 is just about as butt-slow as a P4-1.5GHz for games. If it's not feasible to slap a P4-2.4GHz or so into your MB, consider upgrading on the (relatively) cheap to an Athlon XP 2500+ (Barton core), 512MB DDR400, and an nForce 2 Ultra motherboard (about $75 + $70 + $65 = $210, minus what you can get for your current MB+CPU+RAM combo).

Your PSU is fine, so I suspect you just forgot to plug in a four-pin power cord into the molex on your 5900XT.

 

[stnicralisk]

You need to try to keep as many things as possible off of the line that the 5900 uses or else the fluctuation in power will scare it into safe mode.

Also its really harsh to judge your 5900xt as a decent card instead of a great card. It is the reigning king of its price range (a few bucks more than a 9600xt) and your system is incredibly crippling for it. Youre going to need at least 2.4 Ghz just not to CPU cripple the thing! Also I think youll find that the core will run at least 425mhz and if you researched the card and bought the xt that has the standard memory in some cases itll flash to a 5950ultra.

Also just so you know if your psu is generic you should give it the boot. Often theyll rate a PSU at say 350 but somewhere it should tell you what temperature it is capable of maintaining this output for generic psu's often it will be an unreasonable temperature (0C) so in effect your PSU could be more likely capable of 300. Although with an Antec case im guessing you get an Antec PSU.

 

[LS1ZX10R]

Originally posted by: stnicralisk
You need to try to keep as many things as possible off of the line that the 5900 uses or else the fluctuation in power will scare it into safe mode.

Also its really harsh to judge your 5900xt as a decent card instead of a great card. It is the reigning king of its price range (a few bucks more than a 9600xt) and your system is incredibly crippling for it. Youre going to need at least 2.4 Ghz just not to CPU cripple the thing! Also I think youll find that the core will run at least 425mhz and if you researched the card and bought the xt that has the standard memory in some cases itll flash to a 5950ultra.

Also just so you know if your psu is generic you should give it the boot. Often theyll rate a PSU at say 350 but somewhere it should tell you what temperature it is capable of maintaining this output for generic psu's often it will be an unreasonable temperature (0C) so in effect your PSU could be more likely capable of 300. Although with an Antec case im guessing you get an Antec PSU.

You sir are correct. I plugged it in to another socket and no more error message. Thanks. Thanks to everyone that took time to reply...I need to upgrade my motherboard and cpu. Far Cry is insisting on it

 

[stnicralisk]

farcry is a resource hog. luckily you have 680 ram. It stuttered for me when i had to remove half of my gig (demo) also ut2k4 stutters at full if i remove half my gig.

Im glad that it fixed the problem for you. I had the same issue with my 5900u (softmod to 5950).