Hi guys, long time no see...haven't modded much in a long while so haven't posted much in a long while, but I will eventually get back to work on Project Vengeance hopefully. Meantime, I just upgrade my vid card from a Geforce4ti4600 to a Geforce6800 Ultra OC from BFGTech. the two slot dual power plug needin beast of a card. I had a 430 watt PSU for everything (including my lighted fans and etc.) and I upgraded to a 560W Thermaltake Purepower PSU because the vidcard says it requires at least a 480 wat PSU. I got slow performance...so I called tech support and we checked voltage...its consistently at around 11.8 on the 12V rail and 4.97 on the 5V rail....so I'm under wattage. Do ya'll think that replacing 3 lighted fans with unlighted fans would buy me back that power or do I need to have two PSU's, one for fans and one for hardware? I've seen a mod here before but couldn't find it that shows how to link two PSU's...but I'm open to suggestions, ya'll are the mastahs!
Those voltages arent bad. A good PSU will be +-5% of the correct voltage, and yours is. It won't make a difference in performance, as computer hardware is designed to work at slightly different voltages. And no, removing the LED fans won't make a difference. LEDs use a tiny amount of the power your PSU supplies.
hmmm...I was going by what they told me at BFG, they said it had to be consistently above 12V on the +12V rail for the vidcard to operate to specs...I'm not disputing what you say because I've always thought that too...What else should I consider then?
ive seen a couple of guides on theses boards but i also know that there is plenty of guides on the net for powering on a PSU without a motherboard, so the simplest idea if you wanted 2 PSU's would be to have the main one powering all your hardware and then another switched one in the case which you can use to run any extra lighting / fans off. this is what im thinking of doing, thus enabling me to have the pc on but have the noisy fans and bright lights off (eg at night)
Doubtful...the game (World of Warcraft) is running slower than it was with an older card. And this is a completely fresh OS install too...
just a thought, but are you using a power splitter for the two plugs on your video card, the two power plugs need to be plugged into different molexes on completely different cables, so that each plug has it's own wire all the way back to the psu, preferably with nothing else on it, some newer psu, like the ocz modstream, have dedicated lines just for this.
Two PSU'S work great, and if you have a little time mod it to your liking The modded one under is a 550W and the plexi one is a 350 for lights and gadgets.They both start at power up with the green wire and a black in the curved wire you see in the back, like powering a ps without a motherboard but this one follows the first
Separate plugs on separate lines back to the PSU, yes...plugs not used by anythign else no...I don't have enough plugs to do that unfortunately...but I might be able to use a splitter on the other lines...is there a limit for each cable to carry? Love that mod btw....what do you do to turn them both on at the same time???
As i said, it's the same green wire that powers the ps without the mobo, here's the long version loll http://www.moddershq.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=616
It's not the supply.. the 12V and 5V ATX supplies are used as inputs to switching power supplies on your video card and motherboard. Those supplies take 12V and 5V and turn them to 2.5V and 1.6-1.3V , so as long as the supply stays at least a volt or so within normal, the switching supply on the vidcard can deal with it. 3.3V is an exception, a lot of chips directly use that as an I/O voltage, droops in voltage can affect system operation.
Ok, my 3.3V seems to be A.O.K. Never drops below 3.3 but after unplugging 3 of my case fans I noticed no change in the voltage anywhere...so I surmise its not the fans...lit or unlit. What else coudl cause piss poor performance with an awesome video card? BTW, the two cords that are powering the vid card are mostly clear... One is powering vid card and floppy drive One is powering vid card and LiveDrive (Sound Blaster Audigy 2ZS Platinum) I do have a TV-Tuner that I'm goign to try removing and seeing if that makes a difference.
Do you have two seperate power chains going to each of the two plugs, or are you using two plugs from one chain? Not likely to be the problem but something worth considering.
How slow is the game you're playing? If it's really slow then I guess it might be the power, but the geforce 6xxx series cards don't exactly perform way better on older games. I'm not sure how old this game you're playing is but it could be the game you're playing. Does the card work well with any of the newer games? I have a 6800GT and when I started up counter-strike for the first time I expected stellar frame rates, but I'm just stuck at about 60 fps no higher and no lower.
a quality 350w PSU would power your system no probs. They just state 480w to account for crappy generic "480w" psus that are really outputting under 400w... It sounds like driver problems imho. even if your lines were severely out of spec there would be no performance decrease at all, you'd just lose stability and the computer would crash oh and tizz0r, it sounds like your CS is limiting the fps. type "fps_max 101" in the console
i'd say either: 1) crapped-out videocard (DOA-ish) or 2) fubar drivers what do you get in am3, 3dmark05, etc? (to compare to what you _should_ get)
