Oh man..please help me out.

[BSC14]

Ok this is my pc before my attempted upgrade last night. P4 2.4c GHZ, ABIT IS7-E, 1GB PC 3200, ATI 9800.

I got a 6800gt and decided to install it...this is my story.

So yesterday I uninstalled my ati drivers (after running Aquamark 3 and 3Dmark05) and then installed the 6800gt Nvidia drivers. After that I ran both Aquamark 3 and 3Dmark05 again. When I ran aquamark I got almost no performance boost at all and when I ran 3Dmark05 I got a much worse score than with my 9800np. In fact it kept locking up on me and the screen even became distorted and the colors were all off. So the first thing I did was check my temps using pcwizard05 and my card temp was in the low 60s which is fairly good for this card from what I understand.

So I uninstalled the new card drivers again and ran a driver cleaner, then defragged and restarted my pc...then installed the drivers again. But I was still having the same problem.

I decided to try WoW and that didn't go very well either. I kept getting flickering on the screen and it would lock up on me over and over. Again I check the temps...no problems there. Running out of ideas I decided to uninstall the drivers again and try the previous ones to see if it was just a driver issue. Same problem.

So I decided the one last thing to try was to reinstall Windows. After staying up way to late doing this....it didn't help one bit.

So I'm stuck now. I know my cpu will bottle neck my 6800gt but it shouldn't be this bad. And even if it was a bottleneck issue it wouldn't distort the screen and all that. I guess there is nothing else to try right? Could I have gotten a bad card?

How do you go about returning a card to newegg.com anyway?

Thanks for any help....

 

[dug777]

Good man

as i said, looks like it is screwed, at the least you should have seen a huge improvement in 3dmark05...

 

[BSC14]

Someone else told me this:

When you installed the card did you install the needed additional power connector? and if you did is it only powering the card or is it connectd to another device as well. My father recently installed a 6600gt and forgot the xtra power and it auto clocked his card down to crap.

That should do it then unless the wire from the power connector goes to another device before it goes to your Power Supply, If it does you may want to give the card its own direct wire with nothing else on it just to eliminate power drain as a potential problem.

That sould like it could be the problem?

 

[dug777]

Originally posted by: BSC14
Someone else told me this:

When you installed the card did you install the needed additional power connector? and if you did is it only powering the card or is it connectd to another device as well. My father recently installed a 6600gt and forgot the xtra power and it auto clocked his card down to crap.

That should do it then unless the wire from the power connector goes to another device before it goes to your Power Supply, If it does you may want to give the card its own direct wire with nothing else on it just to eliminate power drain as a potential problem.

That sould like it could be the problem?

have you tried doing what he suggested?

even if it means disconnecting a few drives while you do it...

 

[BSC14]

Originally posted by: dug777

Originally posted by: BSC14
Someone else told me this:

When you installed the card did you install the needed additional power connector? and if you did is it only powering the card or is it connectd to another device as well. My father recently installed a 6600gt and forgot the xtra power and it auto clocked his card down to crap.

That should do it then unless the wire from the power connector goes to another device before it goes to your Power Supply, If it does you may want to give the card its own direct wire with nothing else on it just to eliminate power drain as a potential problem.

That sould like it could be the problem?

have you tried doing what he suggested?

even if it means disconnecting a few drives while you do it...

Not yet. Is it a common problem?

 

[Sentry2]

!?!?!?! You MUST install a power connector to your 6800GT or it will act like that. An AGP slot by itself can not supply enough power to that card. Look on the end of the card and you'll see a spot for a 4 pin molex to plug into...DO IT :thumbsup: This should solve your problem that way you can put that GT to work.

 

[Topweasel]

BCS, Yes even My 9800XT required external power but it was a normal 4 pin molex. You should have gotten a 6 Pin connector with 2 female 4 pin molexs comming out of it. AGP only supplies 1/4 of the power needed for your card.

 

[BSC14]

No, no guys. It does have power to it. I used the same plug my 9800 nonpro was using. However all the wires are bundled together so I don't know if it is running a single wire straight from the psu to the card or if it's sharing power with the HD and whatever else.

 

[selfbuilt]

How about your chipset/AGP drivers? I'm not familiar with your mother board, but chipset drivers can sometimes get boinked when changing graphics cards. I know you re-installed windows, but it's amazing how often people forget to re-install their AGP drivers.

 

[BSC14]

Originally posted by: selfbuilt
How about your chipset/AGP drivers? I'm not familiar with your mother board, but chipset drivers can sometimes get boinked when changing graphics cards. I know you re-installed windows, but it's amazing how often people forget to re-install their AGP drivers.

I installed my motherboard/chipset drivers...yes.

 

[selfbuilt]

Hmmm, power supply (wattage, maker)? Also, you might want to run prime95/memtest to very your CPU/mem are stable. I know it seems unlikely, but I've seen GPU upgrades send people over into manifested instability, usually due to maximally tasking other system components that weren't completely stable to start with (esp. mem and PSUs).

If after all that you are still GPU unstable, I'd be thinking it's RMA time.

 

[BSC14]

I guess I'll try that as well as making sure it has a power cable to itself. Could it be a power issue like that? Is that a common problem?

 

[Sentry2]

What brand of card is it?

 

[selfbuilt]

Yeah, power issues are common problems ... these new high-end GPUs are very tasking on the system. Do you know maker/wattage of your PSU? The info is written on the side the unit - including the detailed watts for each voltage rail (i.e. 3.3V, 5V, 12V). That info might help troubleshoot (although you can't really trust the values on generic PSUs, so it's hard to say).

 

[BSC14]

It's a 480w Ernmax or some crap like that.

The card is made by Albabtron. I read a lot of really good reviews on the card so I don't know.

 

[selfbuilt]

a 480w Enermax would be fine (and a good choice for a P4, btw . Sounds like it's probably a problem with the card, but I would do system stability testing just to be sure. Good luck!

 

[Sentry2]

Hmmm...I'm sure your power supply is fine. Maybe you should make sure you have a dedicated line for the card. If you run it off the same one as your hard drive(s) you'll run into problems. If its on the same one as your cd/dvd drive you probably won't run into as many problems. If it does have it's own power line and it continues to give you problems you should probably rma it. That sucks man...you're probably ready to pull your hair out by now huh? Well good luck and hope you figure it out.

 

[BSC14]

Originally posted by: Sentry2
Hmmm...I'm sure your power supply is fine. Maybe you should make sure you have a dedicated line for the card. If you run it off the same one as your hard drive(s) you'll run into problems. If its on the same one as your cd/dvd drive you probably won't run into as many problems. If it does have it's own power line and it continues to give you problems you should probably rma it. That sucks man...you're probably ready to pull your hair out by now huh? Well good luck and hope you figure it out.

Thanks guys. If it doesn't have a dedicated line for the card then I will try it again with one. If it does I'll be sending it back to newegg. They will take it back right?

And yeah, if I had hair I would have pulled it out.

 

[Sentry2]

Ah...well then you're lucky you don't have hair

Newegg is great about taking stuff back...refund for most stuff up to 30 days...replacement for one year...they will also waive the restocking fee when you send something back if the new item is more expensive. Done it many times :thumbsup:

 

[BobDaMenkey]

They're really good about taking stuff back. I'd recommend trying to RMA it through them(having them send you a new card because that one was bunk) first though, unless the experiance has made you not want to try nVidia again.

edit: On a side note, the 6800GT I have in my computer was the 3rd one I got. The first 2 both artifacted on bootup. I have a friend that had 3 die on him within as many months before he got one that was actually reliable.

 

[BSC14]

Originally posted by: BobDaMenkey
They're really good about taking stuff back. I'd recommend trying to RMA it through them(having them send you a new card because that one was bunk) first though, unless the experiance has made you not want to try nVidia again.

edit: On a side note, the 6800GT I have in my computer was the 3rd one I got. The first 2 both artifacted on bootup. I have a friend that had 3 die on him within as many months before he got one that was actually reliable.

I'm thinking I might go ati....what's the closest one to a 6800gt?

 

[blckgrffn]

X800XL/X800 Pro... an X800 Pro was available direct from ATI for 199.99 last I checked, search for something like that in the hot deals forum. Make sure the 6800GT has that dedicated line though. Something seems to be F'd up. Use the coolbits registry entry (google is your friend) to check your clock speeds from the nvidia control panel found in the advanced section of your desktop video settings.

Good luck!
Nat

 

[dug777]

Originally posted by: BSC14

Originally posted by: BobDaMenkey
They're really good about taking stuff back. I'd recommend trying to RMA it through them(having them send you a new card because that one was bunk) first though, unless the experiance has made you not want to try nVidia again.

edit: On a side note, the 6800GT I have in my computer was the 3rd one I got. The first 2 both artifacted on bootup. I have a friend that had 3 die on him within as many months before he got one that was actually reliable.

I'm thinking I might go ati....what's the closest one to a 6800gt?

x800xl, or go a x800xt, which is the same or slightly faster than a 6800 ultra...

 

[BSC14]

Do those support ps3 or what ever it's called?

 

[blckgrffn]

Originally posted by: BSC14
Do those support ps3 or what ever it's called?

No.