How do you know if your PSU is underpowered?

Rambo2683

Rambo2683

Rambo2683

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Joined
1 Oct 2006
Posts
234
Hi, I'm trying to figure out what is wrong with my PC, i have recently upgraded to a 4870x2, however it runs no better, and sometimes worse than my old 8800GT.
This is on a fresh install of Windows XP.
For some reason Vista64 crashes when I try to do a fresh install of it since I have installed the new card.
I have also noticed a lot more hard drive activity since I installed the card, with massive crunching going on continuously. There is also a small delay on the DVD ROM, it used to ask me if I wanted to boot from CD a little sooner than it does now.

I have an X-Power 700W which I got from PC world or ******, not sure which. But I know this card is quite a beast and requires a lot of juice.

The reason I ask is because I don't have any other problems other than pretty crap performance from a card which is generations ahead of my old card. I don't have any glitching, crashes or failure to start the machine like I have had in the past when my PSU was dying.

My PC is as follows:
e2180@3ghz
Gigabyte P31 DS3L
4GB DDR800 RAM
Sapphire 4870X2
WD Raptor 37gb
Windows XP 32bit

I have tried without overclocking the CPU but that didn't help. I'm also soon to get a q9550, but surely the CPU isn't at fault here? I get 9000 3D mark 2006 points, which is WAY below what this card is capable of.

How do I test the PSU, is there a way?
Any help appreciated :confused:
 
to be honest id think about changing the psu anyway ,if you get a high quality one it should last you though many rebuilds so is good back for buck in the long run ,btw i think it could well be a psu problem
 
It's running worse than your old card because you CPU is a massive bottleneck. You will certainly have to upgrade that to get the best out of your 4870x2. I wouldn't say the PSU is the problem at all.
 
If you have recently installed Vista, make sure you turn off indexing. This would explain the heavy disk activity.

As already posted, the CPU is likely causing the bottleneck.
 
Really? I would love to save myself 70 quid if that is the case! :)
The rest of the upgrade is costing enough as it is :p

The q9550 is due any day now.
 
To get the best out of a X2 you really need a quad. Your poor little E2180 with it's 1mb cache will be badly bottlenecking that card. On a side note, you psu is a load of cack too. You can get much better for £70. There is no way that thing will be able to deliver 700w.
 
I just loaded my PC and the screen was all garbled when it updated itself to my 120hz refresh rate profile. I had to swap the refresh rate back n forth to effectively clear it and now it's fine.
Is that a driver problem or?
 
pastymuncher said:
To get the best out of a X2 you really need a quad. Your poor little E2180 with it's 1mb cache will be badly bottlenecking that card. On a side note, you psu is a load of cack too. You can get much better for £70. There is no way that thing will be able to deliver 700w.
Click to expand...

That did make me chuckle. Yeah, I have decided to get the corsair PSU with it's 52a single 12v rail :eek:
If not to cure my problems, but just to be safe as it's not exactly a budget PC anymore, I've got an Intel SSD on the way as well, so I don't want to have it all die at the hands of that POS power supply :)
 
Rambo2683 said:
That did make me chuckle. Yeah, I have decided to get the corsair PSU with it's 52a single 12v rail :eek:
If not to cure my problems, but just to be safe as it's not exactly a budget PC anymore, I've got an Intel SSD on the way as well, so I don't want to have it all die at the hands of that POS power supply :)
Click to expand...

its a good move mate ,make it a lot easer to clock the nuts of that new chip :D
 
could be the overlcock causing instability..

set all to default clocks
what ram do you have? (who makes it)
 
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