7950Gt (AGP) giving me fits

[Thoth093]

In an attempt to wrest the last bit of life out of my current system, I have attempted to upgrade it.

Recently, I bumped up to 2 gb of pc3200. This week, I bought a 7950 GT (AGP model), and installed it.

It worked great for about a day. But all of a sudden, I've started gettting severe artifacting, screen glitches, crazy colors, etc. Even at POST.

I let everything cool down for about half an hour, and for a minute or two it seemed that worked. But then it just started right back up again.

Is the card hosed? I guess I could RMA it if it is. Seems to be in perfect condition. Nothing broken or loose as far as I can tell.

Or could it be a power situation? I have a 450 watt power supply with 20a on the 12V rail, which is supposed to be sufficient to run the card, according to the box. I've upgraded power supplies before, so I'm not too worried about if that's it. But how can you tell? And would it wait so long to start glitching if it was a power supply? It ran every game I threw at it last night like a champ, so I'm really bummed about this.

My other system configuration is as follows:

Athlon 64 3200
2gb PC-3200
Three hard drives - one SATA, two IDE 133
Generic DVD drive
Generic DVD writer
SB Audigy 2 Sound Card
Belkin wireless card
Windows XP SP 2

Previously, I was running an MSI 6800 GT with no problems whatsoever.

If you need more information, I'd be happy to provide it. I was playing a demo of BF2142 when things went seriously south. Thanks EA. hehe

Appreciate the help, folks.

Brian

 

[spittledip]

20 amps on the 12v sounds low to me even if the box said that is all it needed.

 

[Thoth093]

Any recommendations for a replacement? Somewhere around $100 would be fine.

 

[spittledip]

You should test to make sure it is psu if you can..

Here is a good psu for you at any rate:

link
review

it is overkill for what you need, but you can always just use it for your next build. You can also go cheaper too if you want.

hot deals Not the best psu, but it will meet what you need and should not crap out on you or trouble your other hardware.

I am sure other people have other suggestions also.

 

[Paratus]

Before you spend money on a new PSU why don't you measure your 12V line with a multimeter or mobo monitoring software. If it doesn't droop much its likely not your PSU.

My thought is your heatsink isn't making good contact with the the GPU.

 

[postmortemIA]

You have 5 drives... ever thought how much power they draw?

 

[evolucion8]

Seems that is a PSU issue to me, try to get a new PSU and test it before the RMA period runs out. If it still giving you issues RMA the card, you can get that card back or the X1950PRO which should be as fast (15% faster on heavy shader games like Oblivion) or a little slower (10% on heavy texture games like F.E.A.R.) or or X1950XT, but I recommend you to get a 500W Quality PSU or better. Look here http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=511&card2=471 comparing the X1950PRO vs the 7950GT and here comparing the 7950GT vs the X1950XT AGP http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=511&card2=503# Bear in mind that the X1950XT AGP posted there have a core clock of 625Mhz when the current one offered by GeCube has a 648MHz core, the same with the memory which the one posted there has a 1.8GHz memory speed and the memory speed currently offered runs only at 1.4GHz.

 

[Thoth093]

Since it's a video problem, I thought perhaps some video might help.

The quality is crappy, but maybe someone can identify what's most probably going on. I think it's RAM personally.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5tmfN7gVLc