Machine in bad state after 9800XT install

[Dewey]

I had the following running fine without any problems for months:

A7V8X XP 2500+ OC to about a 2800+
2x512MB Corsair
80GB WD
4x200GB WD SATA with 3Ware card in RAID 5
Sony DVD burner
DVD DROM
Ti4200 128MB
Cheapo firewire card
3 Case fans
Antec TruePower 480

I got an ATI 9800XT so I installed it. After turning it on, my BIOS couldn't see the main boot drive and my RAID controller was complaining that it couldn't see 2 of the 4 drives. I could also hear lots of drives powering on and off (the whining or them coming on and off). So I powered down and checked it all out. Nothing seemed to work. So I put back in the Ti4200. After that I can see the boot drive, but my RAID 5 controller complains that 1 drive is down and I can hear a drive powering up and down, so I'm assuming that's the one the RAID controller is complaining about. My boot drive was toast so I had to reinstall Windows XP Pro (repair wouldn't fix it). And now the machine keeps locking up.
It was 100% stable before. Any ideas? I was thinking I need a bigger PSU, but shouldn't it be cool after returning to the Ti4200? Or maybe I just shorted something?

Dwayne

 

[een]

wow, this is a tough one...

I remembered when I was doing my upgrade, apparrently I zapped the mobo with static electricity,and everything went gamut...
The only way I know is that I tried a new mobo with the old stuff, and they work...

But it could be a bad psu, as 9800 needs a lot of amps... maybe when you put it in the psu gave up, and stop providing stable voltage...
HD will stop working when there's not enough power, grab a new 350+ watt good brand (antec) psu and put it in...
chances are they will all work

 

[fredtam]

If you have the four pin power adapter for the 9800 split off of the hard drive power cable (as per ATI instructions) switch it to a different power cable with less on it (fans). I had a similar problem and once I switched the power adapter to an unused power cable on my antec 430 the problem went away.

 

[Dewey]

fretam
I don't have any extra four pin connectors so I have to split off something (5 hard drives 2 DVDs). Also, it's having problems without the 9800XT in it!

een,
Is 350W enough? Is it possible I was just barely working before and getting lucking with a 480W? Or maybe it's just going bad and the 9800XT put it over the edge.

 

[mrgoblin]

I could not only get a bigger psu but isolate the video card on one 4 pin. That card needs alot of juice. Try taking out ure dvd drive and run it on one.

 

[johnjkr1]

Did you try it with less of the drive installed...perhaps two hard drive, one optical, etc to see if it worked fine then? that would definetly let you know if it was lack of power or not

 

[Dewey]

I didn't try less devices. However, now the machine is still flakey without the 9800 installed and one drive is down. That's the part I don't understand. Now it locks up in windows with the old stable setup!?!?!?

 

[Gstanfor]

read the following very carefully.

FINALLY! SUCCESS! Well, it appears that Fraps 2.0 takes screenshots/movies differently then Fraps 1.x and Print Screen do, and it copied the screen exactly how I saw it. So anyway, here's the compair pic (compressed into 100% quality JPEG, origional bitmaps availible at request):

http://www.angelfire.com/dragon/edge2/ns-aa.jpg

Both of these are the exact same frame, taken at the exact same time (you can tell by the framerate and bandwidth indicators being the same). The game was run at 640x480 with 6xAA (as well as lvl16 performence aniso). The one on the right was taken with the print screen button, the one on the left is from FRAPS.

As you can see, NO AA is applied to the ammo clip of the gun in the fraps picture, exactly the same way I saw it in-game. AA in the left picture is still applied everywhere (for example the top of the res node base) EXCEPT for edges in front of the transparency. Also, it seems that print screen uses Window's brightness and contrast settings rather then the video accleration settings, since the left image is noticably brighter and has sharper contrast then the right one.

I would've taken a movie of this (it looks quite strange seeing the AA "disappear" as the transparencies go through the gun), but Fraps 2.0 only captures at 1/4 res unless you have a registered version of it. Oh, and sorry about the large image size breaking the tables, if you know a way to fix it please tell me

The pictures in the link were taken with FRAPS 2.0 and printscreen. FRAPS 1.x has nothing to do with anything in this discussion.

 

[Dewey]

Thanks all!
It was a bad power supply. I guess the 9800XT pushed it over the edge. I measured the 5.0V line on the 4 pin connectors and it was 4.55V. Replaced the True Power 480 with a True Control 550 and everything works.

Thanks again!