Have a serious PSU question.

[GhandiInstinct]

I have an old 2000 Dell that has a 80gb 8mb cache hd, CDRW, Audigy, lan card, G4 4200, 512 ram and a p3 800 cpu. The psu is 200 watts. Now I believe that's just on the border line of running my system fine. But I just recently put in a 9600XT. And I get like 10 fps a second in Warcraft 3 with lots of units on screen even on the lowest resolution.

Now is this a PSU problem? Or an old motherboard problem? Cause my graphics didn't improve by the switch of cards. But logicaly thinking, if it didn't get enough power then it wouldn't work at all right?

 

[Futurecomm]

Generally, those issues are with the lower FSB on the motherboard, the low end processor, and low end of ram type. I have the ATI 9800 Pro and i can Doom3 at 800x600 high settings and keep at the 60fps that Doom3 max's out at. also try the lastest Catalyst WHQL 4.9 drivers, they have a Doom3 fix within them.

GOod Luck,
Futurecomm

 

[GhandiInstinct]

But the PSU has to be some factor. 200watts isnt enough to power a system with a 9600Xt right?

 

[Fern]

First Warcraft 3 is heavily CPU dependant AFAIK.

Second, I've gone from Ti4200 to a 9600pro. Not much difference, In Fact I read that the Ti4200 may be faster at games using DX 8 w/no AA and AF. The 9600xt has DX 9 capabilities, and wins there.

Yeah, a bad psu can cause al knids of probs. But if it were me, I'd prolly run some vid benchies like 3d Mark 01 and see how it's performing against similar rigs.

When changing from nVidia to ATI, it's usual to either reformat or run Driver Cleaner (free proggie fo the d/l) to get rid of old driver fragments/files that aren't removed in the control panel. They will cause problems/perfromance loss.

Fern

 

[GhandiInstinct]

lol, similar rigs? I think its an oddity to pair 9600xt into a 4 year old obsolete system.