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nVidia 8800GT + Antec Quattro PSU = Lack Of Power!

james.miller said:
since when does a psu communicate with a graphics card?:confused: there are no data lines, only power.
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Alright James. I don't know that much about the tech but there is some basic communication between a PSU and the mobo, the PG signal for instance, a mobo can't boot unless the PSU says so (or is it the other way around lol?).

I'm not sure whats going on inside nVidia cards though, there must be some mysterious tech lurking in there? I mean how does a graphics card make a decision that its not getting enough power from the PSU?

I have run into so many issues with various Antec PSU during the past year that I am starting to wonder whats happening?

Just a few days ago I had to send back another Antec PSU because the 120mm inside it was rattling like a good un, that was their new Antec Neo 650w *blue*.

Anyway I'm glad you built your HTPC because thats where I really clocked the Corsair PSU.

I'm a bit frazzled atm as I have been awake since 8.00am Friday, but I'm glad I got to the bottom of the issue, gonna have a little TF2 session shortly and forget about the pain-in-the-*** 24 hours I've had! :cool:
 
There is a communication between a PSU and a card, it's one of the reasons 8pin PCI-E is different from 6 pin. The only difference being another two ground connections, ATi's CCC knows when it isn't plugged in.

Yes it is worth mentioning, why would you want to load a PSU under it's peak efficiency load? Let's all go buy 1000w power supplies for out HTPC's because hey! it doesn't matter right.
 
Mekrel said:
Yes it is worth mentioning, why would you want to load a PSU under it's peak efficiency load? Let's all go buy 1000w power supplies for out HTPC's because hey! it doesn't matter right.
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whats the difference between a corsair hx-620 and a 1000w antec quattro under a 350-400w load?


i havent seen a test of the 100w yet, but the 850w quattro?......






....... one percent says jonnyguru

corsair http://www.jonnyguru.com/review_details.php?id=32&page_num=2 ~83%
quattro 850 http://www.jonnyguru.com/review_details.php?id=120&page_num=3 ~83%

just for reference, 1000w enermax http://www.jonnyguru.com/review_details.php?id=25&page_num=2 ~ 82%


i dont believe, AT ALL, that its worth mentioning. that number on the side - 620...1000.... eleventy billion, it makes no difference. a psu will draw what it needs form the mains, no more. how efficient that psu is is down to its design, and all of the top tier psu's follow the same basic disign principals.

no need to get shirty tbh:)

Alright James. I don't know that much about the tech but there is some basic communication between a PSU and the mobo, the PG signal for instance, a mobo can't boot unless the PSU says so (or is it the other way around lol?).
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yeahs its a bit weird. i think thats just an excuse from antec really. very strange...
 
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Hello,

just thought I'd make a little update, everything is swell and the system has been lashing out the benchmarks for 12 hours straight, hasn't missed a beat yet!

If it has just been me that had the Quattro/8800GT bug then I would think it was a single bad example but because lots of other forum members around the world have also been having the same issues then there is obviously some *bug* that needs to be fixed?

I have had a similar issue from Antec earlier this year with their older NeoHE PSU's, some of them (not all) had a hard time running a system with an ASUS motherboard, they would either not powerup (bad PG signal) or they would just power-down your system at will!!! :eek: So you would be sitting their just having a little read of the forums and. . . . shutdown?

By swapping out any of these PSUs and replacing them with a generic PSU resolved the issues in all cases so there is deffo something up with Antec of late?

So I have boxed up the three week old Quattro and am awaiting for a reply from my RMA request with the supplier. . . . its outta here! :cool:
 
<maddness> said:
:(
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soyoDragon said:
:( :( :(
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Hello, I didn't forget about you guys! ;)

As I mentioned above I intend to RMA this PSU for a full refund. I would suggest that you also consider this route if you wish.

My PC time is important to me whether I am playing a game or just sitting down with a cup of coffee to paw through the forum posts.

In short when I pay a £££ Premium £££ amount of money for a piece of hardware it has to work better than I expect or I will not be truly satisfied.

The current Antect Quattro not working with an 8800GT has cost me a lot of time and inconvenience not to mention money. Amazingly the guy at the hardware store where I picked up my Corsair PSU gave me a decent price on it when I explained my plight, £89.00 cash-in-hand and I walked away with it in my hand, once it was installed a few hours later all my PC worries were gone! :)

*if* my RMA goes through and *if* I get the money credited back to my card before my next statement is issued then I will be all good, in fact as I paid £135-£158 for the Quattro the reduced cost of the Corsair replacement should save me a few quid.

I will post back what happens but hopefully you both get a happy resolution to your issues, deffo consider an RMA, take a replacement if you wish (as long as its gonna work?) but a refund would be preferable, good luck! :cool:
 
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Big.Wayne said:
Hello, I didn't forget about you guys! ;)
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got rid of mine, didnt want a replacement and have anymore problems, i can get a new corsair hx 620w for £78 delivered but i just picked up 2 others from here, might still get the corsair though.

but its deffinatly the antec thats causing the problems, a cheap generic did a better job which is annoying, and besides this antec was a later rev 3 model too.

Ah well antec are on my "do not buy" list
 
Mekrel said:
Why have you got a 1000w power supply?
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Hi Mekrel, sorry I didn't reply earlier but I thought the question was a bit off topic, after all it was meant to be a *support* thread for anyone sitting in front of a Quattro/8800GT computer wondering why it wasn't working.

Your question is a reasonable one but you do come across as being a bit shirty?

Anyway to answer your question . . .

"Why have you got a 1000w power supply"

I have been using an Antec True-Power Trio 550w PSU for about a year with no issue (apart from its not modular). About a month ago I bought a Radeon HD 2900XT and installed that into my machine, however while in the course of using the system I started getting strange reboots and freezes? Yes the machine was overclocked but had been for some time with no problem, anyway as protocol dictates, I returned the machine to its stock settings and continued, sadly I still had a few weird issues?

I started to suspect that the PSU may be struggling now that I had swapped out a X1950XT for a HD 2900XT and all I wanted to do was get on with some gaming/benching etc. I hooked up my PSU tester and it all checked out fine. hmmm?

At that point I thought I may need to get myself a new, more powerful PSU so I started reading the forums and reviews etc and picked up on the Antec Quattro 850. My initial budget had been up to about £100 which is about right but I got offered a Quattro 1000w for about tha same price as a 850w retails so I thought go for it, why not?

Obviously the rest is history but the funny thing is that somewhere along the line I tested my original TruePower Trio again but this time it fails? The +5v rail is shot, was reading as +4v, so that unit has now been RMa'ed back to Antec (costing me £22 to send!).

So in hindsight I think I got unlucky, I had an intermittant faulty PSU that was hard to detect and it started really playing up at around the time I had installed the new Radeon.

Once the Antec Quattro was installed eveything worked great. . . until I swapped out the HD 2900XT for the 8800GT! :rolleyes:

I mean its bad enough that there are motherboards that only accept either SLI or CrossFire set-ups, It would just get silly if PSU makers started doing it as well! :D

Anyway thats the answer to your question, a chain of events that led up to my decision to purchase a 1K psu. . .

*if* I get a refund for the Quattro and *if* I get RMA'ed a brand new Trio 550w from Antec which I can sell at auction then I should be all good,

thanks for reading and have a nice day lol! :p
 
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Phew, nearly thought about getting one of these cards, but as I'm gonna be getting an 8800GT I think I'll try something else instead. Thanks for the heads-up, matey.
 
Sure no problem, I guess I should have done a proper search myself before purchasing. Anyway my Quattro has been RMA'ed and the supplier found it faulty and refunded me in full.

Switched to the Corsair HX620 and haven't looked back since! :D
 
A lot of things to correct...

There are many issues that have been brought up in this thread, so let me try to tackle them all.

Power usage is determined by load and efficiency, not capacity. If you take a 75% efficient 500 Watt PSU and hook it up to a 400 Watt load, you'll pull 500 Watts out of the wall. Take the same computer and put an 80% efficient 1 Kilowatt PSU on it and you'll pull only 480 Watts out of the wall. Also, with the larger PSU, you'll be running an easy 50% load so the PSU will probably last longer, and the fan will run slower, hence quieter. That's the reasoning behind having some overcapacity when you choose a PSU. 100% overcapacity like this example is, of course, overkill.

Now, if you run a 550 Watt computer with a 550 Watt PSU, the PSU won't last very long. If you don't know how many watts you need, you can kill even a rugged PSU when the last thing you want to do is waste time and money on an RMA. A little knowledge can help.

I'm surprised to see a lack of accurate wattage information in this thread. Most OC'ers and performance builders will use Watt calculators as a tool to get a close estimate of the required wattage of their rig. Then you actually know what size PSU you need. The calculator I use is at
http://www.extreme.outervision.com/powercalc.jsp

Graphics cards do not "communicate" per se, however they do interact with the power supply. There is no signal similar to PG when dealing with PCI-E. The card must require a minimum load from the psu rail within a certain number of milliseconds in order for the psu to balance loads and provide the power the GPU needs. It's not any more difficult than that.

Our design fix in response to these problems was not to fix a 'defect' in our PSU. It was to adjust our reaction to be more tolerant of certain load timing issues.

These power supplies were tested by NVIDIA themselves before we released them, and they passed all of NVIDIA's tests. We could not use the SLI logo if we had failed any of their tests. Any Quattro power supply has enough power to run a pair of 8800GTXs without breaking a sweat. There is going to be variation in your individual card, but 8800GTX cards use a slightly different amount of power than the 2900. When you do your rig's Watt calculation, try subbing in a 2900 instead of the 8800GTX and see what happens...

To see an independent evaluation of this PSU with a pair of power-hungry 2900's, please check out
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/
and check out the head to head comparison with the Silverstone 850. My favorite quote is "Even though both the TPQ and the DA850 came out smelling like roses, the Quattro came out smelling like a whole field of roses."
:cool:
 
I keep hearing you mention the 8800GTX for some strange reason AntecRep. What is the point of that when this thread is about " nVidia 8800GT + Antec Quattro PSU = Lack Of Power!"?. What is happening with the 8800GT's and the Antec Quattro??. I hope your not trying a politician's special by avoiding the main question and answering in riddles.

I'm surprised to see a lack of accurate wattage information in this thread.
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A lot of people are fine with PSU's on this forum. Just because a few people are having problems with your PSU and GT's doesn't mean that people are misinformed or lacking in knowledge on these boards.

These power supplies were tested by NVIDIA themselves before we released them, and they passed all of NVIDIA's tests. We could not use the SLI logo if we had failed any of their tests. Any Quattro power supply has enough power to run a pair of 8800GTXs without breaking a sweat. There is going to be variation in your individual card, but 8800GTX cards use a slightly different amount of power than the 2900. When you do your rig's Watt calculation, try subbing in a 2900 instead of the 8800GTX and see what happens...
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So are you saying that if the Quattro can run the 8800GTX then it can run the 8800GT without breaking a sweat?. What is this thread about then?. :confused:

Edit: Oh and Welcome to the forums (I hadn't noticed it was your first post until I read Big Wayne's post).
 
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AntecRep said:
There are many issues that have been brought up in this thread, so let me try to tackle them all.
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Hello AntecRep,

firstly as is customary let me say 'Welcome to the forums' :)

Thanks for popping in to give us all some feedback, would be good to hear more information on what is causing the issue that I experienced while using a new Quattro with the 8800GT.

If it had been a one off scenario with a single unit I would have put it down to bad luck but seeing as quite a few people world-wide have hit the same problem then surely something is amiss?

I also wonder, what testing did Antec do with the 8800GT seeing as its a new card and all you may not have had a chance?

I don't understand why this issue affects the 8800GT cards but not an 8800GTS?

Personally I am all good now since pulling the Quattro from my system but it caused me to lose an entire nights sleep and on the whole was a great inconvenience. The 8800GT is proving to be a very popular card so I'm sure I won't be the last system builder to be left scratching their head when they pair your Quattro PSU with this shiny new GPU.

If the fault lay with Antec I would pull the units from retail until you have resolved the issue, however if the fault lay elsewhere then please share the infomation with us all.

Having used Antec PSU's for many years I am personally disappointed with this latest product but I will say that any time I have had an issue I have found Antec Support to be top notch! :cool:

Thanks for reading and have a nice day, look forward to your update.
 
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