X850XT PE lockups - weak PSU?

[steiner666]

I am having problems with my new Visiontek Xtasy X850XT PE (agp). In some games (Guild Wars, FEAR) the screen all the sudden goes blank although sounds and game controls persist. The light on my monitor goes from green to orange so there's no signal. Sometimes when this happens in GW i can hit Alt+Tab and it will bring my desktop up and then hit it again and the game will resume, same with FEAR. However sometimes it will go to the desktop (i can hear the ambient game noises stop) but the display will stay out forcing me to restart. I havent had these problems with past video cards and i just got this one this weak so I can only think that it would be a problem with the graphics card or my PSU.
Has anyone else had problems with their graphics card like this that has been resolved by gettin a new PSU? Right now i have a 450w cheap PSU that came with my case, and i havent had any issues until i got this new card. Anyways i'm trying to decide whether to send back my card or order a new PSU, so any advice on what to do and/or which PSU to order (under $100) would be great!

[ShadowFlare]

Post the information on the sticker of your PSU (a picture, if possible), or if you know the name and model of your PSU, that would probably be sufficient to find the information.

[steiner666]

ok its an L&C PSU and under the output it has:
+3.3v/28A +5V/50A +12V/18A -12V/1A -5V/0.8A +5VSB/2.5A

+5v & +3.3 combined load 230W
+5v & +3.3 & +12v combiend load 422W
total output 450W max


Also i pulled up ATItool and set it at default speed and opened 3d rendering then brought up Winbound HWdoctor and watched my voltages and my +12v was floating between 11.5-11.7 and my -12v was around 12.85-12.93. When i overclocked it to around 575/620 it would come up with an alert every now and then saying that it exceeded 13v on -12. It also told me that with my 9800pro a lot but it never did the blank screen thing.

[ShadowFlare]

I'm not sure whether 18A is enough on the 12V rail or not; this isn't really something I have much experience with, but the information will probably help someone else figure out your problem. BTW, my 485 Watt PSU has 33A on 12V, so 18A is quite a bit less.

[steiner666]

damn, it sure is. OK now I was lookin at newegg for a new PSU and i found one i was gonna order: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817103931 or maybe: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817103937 and I also found the one you have and its 12v amps were about the same as these PSUs, so i take it that it combines 12v1 and 12v2? Also on the PSUs with the one 120mm fan on it, those are intake fans and mounted facing downwards right? cause i dont have any exhaust on my cases top

[koolpc]

I would get a new PSU mate. 500w should be great.

[ShadowFlare]

damn, it sure is. OK now I was lookin at newegg for a new PSU and i found one i was gonna order: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817103931 or maybe: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817103937 and I also found the one you have and its 12v amps were about the same as these PSUs, so i take it that it combines 12v1 and 12v2? Also on the PSUs with the one 120mm fan on it, those are intake fans and mounted facing downwards right? cause i dont have any exhaust on my cases top
Yes, that's what I did, I added both of those together. I don't remember what the two are each for, but I know that both are used. As for the fans, they are always exhaust fans, never intake fans.

BTW, what kind of cpu do you have?

[steiner666]

P4 2.8ghz Northwood at the moment, although I will be getting a A64 +3700 or better by end of the year.

[ShadowFlare]

Hmm, so the psu might be it. I think that cpu uses a significant amount of power, so when you added in a video card that used more power, that's probably where your problems came from.

Does anyone else have some information about this?

[steiner666]

im thinking it definitely is my PSU for several reasons. First off a majority of these monitor shut offs occur right when i'm starting a level (when theres normally a tiny bit of lag as graphics, noises, and everything are being loaded) and the rest occured at certain points into a level where i think it might be loading up another part (i.e. on a mission in GW when we were walking over a hill and entering an enemy base). I think that the lockups basically occur when the graphics card and cpu are under load and the HDD is loading up more info. Or it might jsut be that the graphics card and processor both on load are enough to overload the PSU.
Also, i've been looking around at different PSUs and every good PSU either has two 12v rails rated at above 16amps each or one heavy 12v rail rated at over 30. From what the sticker on the side of my PSU is tellin me, I only have one 12v and its rated at 18amps, which is far from good enough I'd think.

I have two questions about getting the new PSU: which would be better to get? Dual 12Vs or one strong 12v? I've seen mixed opinions so far reading elsewhere. And also, when I get the PSU and am hooking things up, should i split things on the rails if i get dual 12vs. Like should i put the graphics card on one with a fan or two and the HDD and dvdrom and another fan on the other? Just trying to figure out how it will balance out best or if it does it auto somehow.

[steiner666]

found a really good way to lock it up - creating a multiplayer game on Battlefield 2 with one of the huge 64 player maps and getting in an aircraft and flying over the map. I can get it to lock up within 30-60 seconds of flight and all the while it is lagging reallllly bad (and not cause graphic settings are too much for it either). In the rare instance that i'm able to fly over the whole map and then make another pass it is much smoother. So I'm still thinking its my PSU, but also could be my GPUs RAM or my systems RAM. But I've ruled out the system RAM since it had no problems like this with my old 9800pro. And I had ATItool log the temps while i was locking up and the highest they ever got was 63.5c/45c (with fan on 100%) so neither the vRAM or the core are overheating. I'm planning on ordering that 500w Antec tomorrow off newegg, but if anyone has any other ideas as to what it could be I'm still open.

[steiner666]

got the Antec PSU and it fixed all my problems

[RatusNatus]

Enermax are still the better one. Take any with dual 12v and at least 500W.
There are anothers good branches like Ocz(expensive just cuz is more beautyfull), Seventeam (cheap but good), TT, Antec(the second option), etc.

I have this one...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817103512

cheeers

[NeoPickaze]

400W is more than enough. As long as it is delievering.

[steiner666]

good and bad news. been running the new PSU for a while now and I haven't had any games causing the signal to the monitor (i assume the graphics card itself) to be shut off, however my problems in BF2 persist, and the screen keeps turning to the vertical bars after playing it for a while while.
Most of the time this only happens when i am flying around in a jet. When i had my 9800pr 256mb AGP and I found the max display settings it could run at, i never had any problems. but then i upgraded to an x800xt and it started giving me these problems (along with others) so i exchanged it for another - still the same, and eventually got this x850xt pe and it does it too, although not as frequently. If i set up the settings to high but to wher ei still get a good framerate things run fine until i start flying or sometimes am just fightin on foot and some vehicles are moving around... or just whenever. I tried setting the settings low and after playing a while i didnt get a lock up, but when i put it on a medium setting it still does it. So anyways i've tested some stuff and figured out that it probably isnt a problem with my card since 3 cards in a row have had this probem, and i have a AC Silencer installed and the temps have never gone above 60/50 even when overclocked.
Its probably not my PSU cause i jsut replaced it with this really nice Antec and my voltages are steady.
And its probably not my RAM cause i ram memcheck on it for a while and it didnt get any errors.
Ok now we come to my question out of all this rambling, is it my processor or my motherboard or could it maybe be a setting in my motherboard? I'm hoping to upgrade soon but right now i'm running a P4 Northwood 2.8ghz (400mhz FSB.. Haha, weak i know) 512 L2 cache (which idles aroun 45 and max load bout 53-55) and 1gb pc3200 ram. I'm running Phoenix - Award BIOS and i'm thinking maybe if these a problem with the motherboard it would be in the AGP settings or something? I have it set to 8x and i've tinkered around with some of the settings but cant figure anything out... I know the easiest thing to do would be to just upgrade but that wont be for another month or so and i'd really like to be able to play BF2 (especcially w/ my new Saitek joysick) without lockups till them. Sorry bout the book of a post

[NeoPickaze]

No problem, it's a shame you are still having problems :(

Do you have AGP Fast Writes enabled with smartgart or in your bios? I know these cause a lot of weird problems with ATI cards. Could be worth a try.

If your problems are now limited to Battlefield 2 check out this guide, it may help.
http://www.tweakguides.com/BF2_3.html

You should try straining your card in other programs, if you can run 3Dmark 05 with antialiasing and at a stupidly high res then maybe it's not so much a hardware issue and more related to a driver incompatibility with BF2.

Out of interest, how high are the settings on BF2 you are trying? I think with things on high it requires 512mb of texture memory - this could be your problem (loading high res textures into main memory isn't fast enough because you are flying, hence the movement rate is increased.)

This could also highlight a motherboard issue. Most possibly an overstrained / heating northbridge chipset (not enough bandwidth / faults between main memory and the AGP bus).

Sorry if I've hit you with a lot of possibilities! Just trying my best to help you :)

[steiner666]

No problem, it's a shame you are still having problems :(

Do you have AGP Fast Writes enabled with smartgart or in your bios? I know these cause a lot of weird problems with ATI cards. Could be worth a try.

If your problems are now limited to Battlefield 2 check out this guide, it may help.
http://www.tweakguides.com/BF2_3.html

You should try straining your card in other programs, if you can run 3Dmark 05 with antialiasing and at a stupidly high res then maybe it's not so much a hardware issue and more related to a driver incompatibility with BF2.

Out of interest, how high are the settings on BF2 you are trying? I think with things on high it requires 512mb of texture memory - this could be your problem (loading high res textures into main memory isn't fast enough because you are flying, hence the movement rate is increased.)

This could also highlight a motherboard issue. Most possibly an overstrained / heating northbridge chipset (not enough bandwidth / faults between main memory and the AGP bus).

Sorry if I've hit you with a lot of possibilities! Just trying my best to help you :)

Thanks for replying. yeah fastwrite was one of the first things i disabled in my BIOS. I read that guide and theres a few things i'd like to try out tonight, but one question i had is what should i set my AGP Aperature size at in my BIOS advanced options? I hear from some people its best to set it at your graphics cards vram size (256mb for me) and from others its best to set it lower and some say the higher the better and i'm just... :confused:
I ran 3dmark05 for a while on several different settings including having everything maxed out (with card overclocked to what i play BF2 on) and didnt get any glitches or artifacts taht i noticed. The guide said that problems with lockpus in BF2 could possible be due to overclocked cards but i dont think thats my case since i have good cooling on it and havent gotten any artifacts in all of the checks i've done with atitool, while running FEAR with high settings, or in the 3dmark which my card was really working hard in, but i'll try running defaults again.
Anyways i was running the game with everything on the highest settings with 6x AA at 1024x768 and everything runs fine cept when the game first starts for like 10-20 seconds theres a bit of lag and the first flyby in a plane then everything runs pretty smooth till it locks up. I'm mainly gonna lower some of the textures and such down to medium and see if that helps or not.
So basically if its the textures, upgrading to 2gb of system memory wont really do much, just need to get a 512mb gfx card next?

[steiner666]

wow, i set a the textures, terrian, and lighting down to medium and there wasnt any lag at all when i started the map, ran to a plane, flew across the map and back and then crashed. so far thats really helping, lol i'm so stupif for not trying it before, but i really love my pretty textures and lighting effects and otehr games performance never seemed to dip any lower at all when i bumped them up to high. Oh well, i'll fly around for a while and see how it goes!

[steiner666]

so far i havent had any screen freezes but have been experiencing crashes to the desktop instead. The game just closes... but its better than the whole thing locking up...

[NeoPickaze]

Try playing the game on stock clocks, even though your GPU is running cool enough it would be worthwhile testing it out at stock - see if that fixes your BF2 stability issues.

To be honest, battlefield 2 pushes all areas your system to extremes like no other game, so I'd advise trying the stock clocks for a while - if they don't help you should be able to rule that out.

Have you overclocked your FSB or memory also?

Also: regarding your question about Memory Aperature setting, I have mine on 128mb (with a 256mb graphics card) but many people recommend you set it to the same size (or up to double) the capacity of the video memory. It won't make a great deal of difference, but it's good to have it there. Something to remember is that it isn't reserved or hidden from your system - it's just there as last resort.

[steiner666]

Nah i havent OCed anything but my gpu, dont even know how to be honest, dont think my BIOS has the option, only thing i can adjust outside of the RAM and AGP settings is the vram, vcore, and chipset voltages.
i played several matches w/o lockups last night. I hate to get my hopes up but i think that lowering the textures/lighting did it. Now the only problem with the game i need to fix is the sound (not being able to run it on hardware rendering with my SB Live! 5.1 card cause of the garbled sounds). I ho

[NeoPickaze]

Ditto with the sound bug, I suffer from it too.

To me it sounds like the sounds I am hearing are coming from the wrong place on the maps but it's so noisy I can't handle it... pretty dissapointing :(

[steiner666]

i fixed my sound prob. Updated my BIOS, my chipset and sound card drivers, and checked IRQs and somewhere along the lines i fixed it and can now not only switch it to hardware rendering, but also enable high quality and EAX. :D