Graphics Card Help

It appears to be a problem with the power supply (I have 330 volts(??))

However my CPU was running at 82 degrees C () and after removing large amounts of crud out of the fan it runs at 41 degrees C at idle. I think my CPU has been trashed as the CPU usage goes up to over 55% doing ordinary things (its a 3.06 P4)

Damn n blast goddam computers...arrgggghhh!!

Ok,so I am having the power supply upgraded.

I think that I will go the whole hog and get a new mobo,Pent dual core processor and DDR 2 memory. I will also install a sli garaphic card.

Any donations greatfully accepted.



Edited by Tony R - November 11 2006 at 10:42

OK,I will bear this in mind Mike.

Thanks once again.

It's not the PSU or the graphics card, it's software hogging your CPU.

Your 330 WATT PSU will be delivering the 3.3v that your AGP card requires with no problems - the only problem that might come about would be if you had a PCI-E card that drew excessive wattage from the 12V rail on your PSU - but that's not the case.

41C is OK - warm, but nothing to worry about. 60C is a bit hot, 80C is very hot and over 90C is cause to get really worried. What temps did it show with your old card?

You only need SLI if you're going for 2 GFX cards for serious gaming - but Crossfire is worth considering as an alternative - hey, if you want to spend money on computers, I'm an expert (at spending money on computers... I recently bought 500 servers for my company)


I would advise going for a decent (cheap) fast AMD chip solution rather than a clunky old Intel based system - I haven't bought Intel since the P4 was caught by the old Athlon XP chips which run at the same speed in real terms, with the same stability, but cost half the price.

The horror stories of excessive heat are long past - I'm in the process of building an AM2 based system for my father and it Rocks (capital R) - that's TWO processors in one CPU, in case you didn't know.

Spec: AM2/Gigabyte small form factor PCI-E based mobo, NVidia 7300T 512Mb GFX, 2Gb Corsair TwinX Dual Channel DDR2 RAM, 250GB SATA II HDD.


    
    

Edited by Certif1ed - November 11 2006 at 15:44

97.4% certain.
    
BTW, I currently have 16 or 17 computers in my house - I've got a few to go free to a good home, although most should be out to pasture at their age

Edited by Certif1ed - November 11 2006 at 14:37

MikeEnRegalia wrote: ^ it's difficult to tell. Modern graphics cards consume much more power in 3D mode than during normal operation ... if after cleaning the fan the CPU temperature is no longer critical but the system still crashes during DVD playback, it can't be CPU/software related.

    
Yes it can - drivers crash the operating system far more frequently than hardware.

It really depends on system behaviour before the new hardware was installed - but since new software was also installed, you cannot pin the blame squarely on the hardware.
    

Edited by Certif1ed - November 11 2006 at 14:39

What Mike describes is what happeened. I got loads of crud out of the CPU fan with a little brush come hoover thingummy I had lying around and the CPU is running at around 41 degrees, it was running at 82 degrees (centigrade!)

Yes I did a full uninstall using ATIs uninstall tool.
I have now reinstalled my ati radeon 9500 pro which works.


Yes,my poor CPU has been running hot for a while but this silly lad chose to ignore it. During start up, after having already run my PC for a while, a hardware monitor alert would come up warning me (Hardware Monitor Found Error. Enter Power Setup Menu for details.) but of course I just pressed F1 and continued. This has been happening for at least 6 months...

I hate computers....

    

Edited by Tony R - November 11 2006 at 15:00

Flippin' 'eck how much dust was clogging that poor CPUs fan?

This does sound like either a power problem or a software problem which though I'm afraid I can't tell you, beyond my (very) limited knowledge.

Sounds like the inside of one of my friends PC, I still shudder at the amount of dust in there, he had owned it for 7 years with out cleaning it. The worst thing was discovering pubic hair in one of the fans. 

Yes,I ran task manager.If I ran PowerDVD it was using 75% of CPU.