Symptoms of lack of power

[Farmer]

Yeah I got a problem. My new X1950AGP hangs w/o boot with a blank screen, all fans spinning. I suspect faulty, or, not enough juice from the PSU, as my mobo gives no VGA error beeps.

I am wondering if this symptom is common to those who have purchased one of those shiny new X19xxx or 7xxx or 8800 cards and forgot about your power supply. I haven't bought a new card (that is, which I didn't know the power expectations of) since three years, so any help would help.

I'm really hoping its the PSU, because that would I mean I actually did score a X1950PRO AGP for a hard-to-find decent price.

 

[Golgatha]

Originally posted by: Farmer
Yeah I got a problem. My new X1950AGP hangs w/o boot with a blank screen, all fans spinning. I suspect faulty, or, not enough juice from the PSU, as my mobo gives no VGA error beeps.

I am wondering if this symptom is common to those who have purchased one of those shiny new X19xxx or 7xxx or 8800 cards and forgot about your power supply. I haven't bought a new card (that is, which I didn't know the power expectations of) since three years, so any help would help.

I'm really hoping its the PSU, because that would I mean I actually did score a X1950PRO AGP for a hard-to-find decent price.

How many amps are on your 12V+ and what CPU are you running?

Edit: If you went from a 6800 Ultra to an X1950AGP, you should probably be using less power overall. I'd suspect the card if that's the case. Does it boot fine with the old card?

 

[Farmer]

That's what I had initially thought, but the support forums at Sapphire says the X1950Pro consumes more power than the 6800Ultra.

I have an Ultra unit (which reviews say to be good, other say to be bad). It is rated at a max of 34A on a single 12v rail, ran the 6800 Ultra fine.

EDIT: From facts, NV40 (6800) seems to be 210m transistors on 281mm^2 through a 130nm process, RV570 (1950) is 330m on 230mm^2 on a 80nm fab, so the RV570 is nearly twice as dense. RV570 also has twice the RAM of the 6800 card and is clocked higher. I'm not sure it would use less power, it seems now that it should use considerably more.