This isn't a help request, rather an information/confirmation request. About two years ago, I bought a Force3D Radeon HD4850; 1GB GDDR3; stock clocks are supposed to be 625MHz/993MHz if I'm correct.
First off, after installation it runs at 625MHz/900MHz by default. Second, it has NO power connector, meaning it draws all required electricity from the x16 PCI-e slot in my Biostar TA770 board. This, it seems, is where the problem appears. To even play a game like Fallout 3 without a crash 10 minutes in, I have to UNDERCLOCK my graphics card to 600MHz/850MHz! Make no mistake, I love this card, the performance is awesome, but I've been overclocking since my Cyrix P233 and given that I installed a Zalman cooler on the card, I expected to do something with it! If I don't do that, practically every game I play either suffers from dramatic slowdowns or simply a CTD or BSoD; especially demanding titles like NFS Undercover and Resident Evil 5. Resident Evil 5 being the most telltale culprit, since it artefacts like crazy at stock speeds practically immediately after loading the game and the benchmark doesn't even finish before the entire game locks up. Reducing the clocks, if not removing the artefacts completely, at the very least decreases them dramatically and the game doesn't crash.
My PSU is a Huntkey 550W. Now before anyone freaks out, I DID check the continuous output before replacing my rubbish Gigabyte Odin 470W with this one. The Odin had the same issues, so I assumed the PSU was at fault, given that the Odin (curse you Gigabyte and your false branding!) has a continuous output of 400W. The Huntkey, however, runs at 450W continuous and seems much better overall than the Gigabyte, for the time I've been using it. It was all I could afford at the time and since the card actually worked (however shoddy) with the Odin installed, I assumed the 50W increase in continuous output would be sufficient to solve my problem. Normally, I suppose it would have been.
A friend of mine had the same GPU (we bought them a month or 2 apart) and, disgusted after encountering the same problems as I have but on a cheap 450W PSU, he sold his to another friend. This guy runs a 600W+ PSU and hasn't noticed any of the problems either of us had. The card runs as smooth as butter. This is another reason which leads me to believe that Force3D's poor decision to not include an external power connector (my PSU has two 6-pin connectors and another 2 for 8-pin configuration) on the card itself.
I have raised the PCI-e wattage in my motherboard BIOS as well but that had no effect, which further confirmed my suspicions. Even though my 3GHz Athlon II 250 CPU has a 65W TDP and is running at stock (when I had a Radeon 4670 it reached 3.8GHz) plus I run one 7200rpm SATA2 hard drive and have two DVD-RW drives installed, which totals a meagre amount of power consumption, this doesn't seem to help; the HD4850 is after all listed on AMD's site as requiring a minimum of 450W to run in an average system and mine is just that. I am assuming that the fault lies with the PSU failing to supply enough power to the motherboard, leaving the graphics card starved. Could anyone verify this for me? Or perhaps someone, somewhere has had a similar problem and if I am wrong they could correct me?
Thanks
First off, after installation it runs at 625MHz/900MHz by default. Second, it has NO power connector, meaning it draws all required electricity from the x16 PCI-e slot in my Biostar TA770 board. This, it seems, is where the problem appears. To even play a game like Fallout 3 without a crash 10 minutes in, I have to UNDERCLOCK my graphics card to 600MHz/850MHz! Make no mistake, I love this card, the performance is awesome, but I've been overclocking since my Cyrix P233 and given that I installed a Zalman cooler on the card, I expected to do something with it! If I don't do that, practically every game I play either suffers from dramatic slowdowns or simply a CTD or BSoD; especially demanding titles like NFS Undercover and Resident Evil 5. Resident Evil 5 being the most telltale culprit, since it artefacts like crazy at stock speeds practically immediately after loading the game and the benchmark doesn't even finish before the entire game locks up. Reducing the clocks, if not removing the artefacts completely, at the very least decreases them dramatically and the game doesn't crash.
My PSU is a Huntkey 550W. Now before anyone freaks out, I DID check the continuous output before replacing my rubbish Gigabyte Odin 470W with this one. The Odin had the same issues, so I assumed the PSU was at fault, given that the Odin (curse you Gigabyte and your false branding!) has a continuous output of 400W. The Huntkey, however, runs at 450W continuous and seems much better overall than the Gigabyte, for the time I've been using it. It was all I could afford at the time and since the card actually worked (however shoddy) with the Odin installed, I assumed the 50W increase in continuous output would be sufficient to solve my problem. Normally, I suppose it would have been.
A friend of mine had the same GPU (we bought them a month or 2 apart) and, disgusted after encountering the same problems as I have but on a cheap 450W PSU, he sold his to another friend. This guy runs a 600W+ PSU and hasn't noticed any of the problems either of us had. The card runs as smooth as butter. This is another reason which leads me to believe that Force3D's poor decision to not include an external power connector (my PSU has two 6-pin connectors and another 2 for 8-pin configuration) on the card itself.
I have raised the PCI-e wattage in my motherboard BIOS as well but that had no effect, which further confirmed my suspicions. Even though my 3GHz Athlon II 250 CPU has a 65W TDP and is running at stock (when I had a Radeon 4670 it reached 3.8GHz) plus I run one 7200rpm SATA2 hard drive and have two DVD-RW drives installed, which totals a meagre amount of power consumption, this doesn't seem to help; the HD4850 is after all listed on AMD's site as requiring a minimum of 450W to run in an average system and mine is just that. I am assuming that the fault lies with the PSU failing to supply enough power to the motherboard, leaving the graphics card starved. Could anyone verify this for me? Or perhaps someone, somewhere has had a similar problem and if I am wrong they could correct me?
Thanks
I replied to the post mainly because I can't believe it's been 7 years and I'm still running the same PSU. Actually I really want to get a new one ASAP now...
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