nvidia gtx 260 problems

[shamgar03]

So my 8800gtx failed a week ago so I ordered a newfangled nvidia gtx 260.
I am relatively sure that the two cards have almost identical power consumption, maybe even with the 8800gtx taking more. However, I found that when I put the new card in there was something wierd happening during boot. The computer would sort of hang for a second early on in the boot cycle and the fans would slow down and the led on the front of the cdrom would fade, then everything would come back and it would boot. I wouldn't get any errors from the nvidia applet etc. However, after playing city of heroes on full settings for about an hour the computer just turned off, and then wouldn't really boot.

So I assumed that the 260 just took much more power, so I swapped the 460 Watt FSP ax500-A that was in there with a newer power supply I had in another computer, a Bluestorm II which is 530Watts. Still, when I boot up I get the same problem. Even stranger my computer is on a UPS and it never loads the UPS more than 270 Watts, meaning there is no way the video card is drawing more power than the powersupply can handle. Does anyone know whats going on?

 

[sticks435]

The only quick advice I can give is to make sure the 6-pin PCI-E power connecter is plugged into the card. It could be that your drawing all the power from the motherboard, which is just enough to make the card function in 2d, but no where near enough for 3d.

 

[Zap]

One possibility is that while it isn't drawing the full power of your PSU, it may be drawing the full +12v power of the PSU (while leaving excess 3.3v and 5v capacity). The newer and better PSUs these days have around 90% of their capacity on the +12v.