well ok, but I have no idea what AGP slot is on my systemboard.

---

Yes I spell bad, but remimber Mighty are the stupid.

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... I really think you should read your motherboard's manual. It'll be healtheir for you if you read that instead of me explaining everything. Also, because you'll need to be installing the new card, your motherboard manual will tell you exactly how to do this. If you do not have the manual ... post the make and model of your board and I'll help you find it online. But this is vital information. How else are you going to know where to put the video card you just bought?

But, sufficed to say, it's the slot on the motherboard that the graphics card goes in. It supplies the physical connection to the motherboard, so the graphics card can have information sent to it ... and display stuff.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

We're talking about the motherboard, not the video card, right?

You have nothing to worry about in any case. Everything is pretty standardized now.

Even if you put an 8x card in a 4x I believe it works, just not as well. It's 1x and possibly 2x (not sure if 2 is the same voltage as 1) but basically there are two real generations of AGP which have different voltages, but this is like original GeForces and such. I have a GF2Ti and it's a 2x.

Theoretically you shouldn't be able to plug the cards in the wrong ones, but stranger things have happened.

But yeah, Half-dude...google is your friend. When you have spare time, just look things up, you'd be surprised what you can learn.

The GF4Ti I had was able to clock down to satisfy a 1x slot's requirements and it was an 8x card.
I can only assume this was/is a general standard practice.

---

Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Well this motherboard is less then two years old, so Im guessing it's an 8X AGP slot.

---

Yes I spell bad, but remimber Mighty are the stupid.

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** UPDATE, PROBLEM RESOLVED **

Hey guys, I did it! I installed the damn thing and now my worries are over. surprisingly it doesnt seem to have the much power then my old 6800, interesting. But hey, at least its as good or a little better unlike some card I know.

Anyway, as a thanks to all of you for the tramendus help in which without it this could not be. I took pictures of it's installation for you to see. ^^

I arrives!

http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=3296250

I insert it.

http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=3296259

I works, on the first go even!

http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=3296267

The only odd thing that happened is when I tried to install the newest drivers from Nvidia. I downloaded the supposed drivers and got this when attempting to install them.

http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=3296281

I dono, maybe I just downloaded the wrong thing frpm the list.

---

Yes I spell bad, but remimber Mighty are the stupid.

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Download the 91.31 GeForce drivers. You might have downloaded the "Go" drivers, which are made for laptop nvidia cards (I think). Once you get the drivers loaded and go play something like doom 3 you WILL notice a large difference.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

that driver upgrade will make a big difference? Hmm it never really seemed to change performance for me before with me 6800 I always thought they were little bug fixes or something that didnt do much.

---

Yes I spell bad, but remimber Mighty are the stupid.

Check out my drawings at http://half-dude.deviantart.com/

that driver upgrade will make a big difference? Hmm it never really seemed to change performance for me before with me 6800 I always thought they were little bug fixes or something that didnt do much.

I was talking about the difference between a 6800 and 7600 GeForce. Also, I'm pretty sure you didn't have 512MB of ram on the 6800 card.

Updating the drivers for graphics cards tends to be a good idea. They tend to be more reliable than chipset driver updates, anyway. They allow things to be used more effeciently. Or they offer more comprahensive support of a hardware feature (pixel shader usage, for example)

---

Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

** UPDATE **

Oh my god, sorry to bring back a dead thread but I must.

I've had time to use this card and must say that I am not impressed. Dont get my wrong, Im happy that its a better card but I was expecting a little more. I downloaded the latest drivers and played Doom 3, Quake 4, HL 2, Hitman Bloodmony, and FEAR and they run exactly the same! As a matter of fact there is a room on Quake 4 that has a noticable slowdown in when my 6800 ran it fine! And I cant run the special light filter on Hitman Bloodmoney without it getting framey performance.

I guess Im being spoiled but I'm kinda dissapointed, I thought I would like be able to run my games at top quality. But instead I have to turn my GPU settings on "best performance over quality" to get it as good as my 6800.

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Yes I spell bad, but remimber Mighty are the stupid.

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I think the 6800 had more "advanced" pixel shaders. But, surely, the extra memory on the card makes up for it. Did you try cranking doom 3? Was there any lag? That's really one to test it on because of the textures. How does the HDR perform in hl2?

Then again, it is a 7600, which is the lower end 7th generation. 6800 was a high end 6th generation. best performance over quality settings in windows should not have any effect on the card inside a game.

One more thing is: are you aware that nvidia cards don't support above 4x AF? I'm not sure why (probably due to some floating point value issue).

If you really want a good test, grab the Call of Juarez demo.

Of course, these are all practical ways of testing the cards merit. You can always do something that doesn't mean much like benchmark your fps. ( :rolleyes: )

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Well, yea I have Doom3 on 1280 x 960 on High quality. However thats what I had on with my 6800. The only thing that seems to fully lag the game is any smoke effects, like steam coming from a vent. Becides that its pritty good.

I tryed to test the HDR effects by playing Lost Coast, I put it on 1280 x 960 with 2x Anti-alising (didnt know I had AA on at the time :rolleyes: ) and as soon as the camera began to stand up and look ahead at the beginning CRASH! So I turned it down to 1024 x 768 and turned AA off and it ran but it STILL LAGGED. Thats one thing I noticed, Nividia cards dont like high quality lighting effects. I turn HDR off and it runs fine, I turn the 'Post filter with distance blur' off on Hitman: Bloodmoney and the fps go way up.

The most common lagging I experiance is more of a nagging kind of lag. What I mean by that is for example. You'll be running down a hallway and it will be nice and smooth and then like every one or two seconds it slows down and the speeds back up again., its very annoying.

Oh and as for FEAR, omg it runs like total crap. I gota say, FEAR has to have the most hoggish engine of all time. FEAR pritty much looks like Doom 3 if you really think about it but it runs sooo much worse!

Oh and just one thing, when I was talking about the "performance over quality" thing I was refurring to this thing in the Nvidia controll panel. It shows a sample render of the logo spinning and you move this slider to Best Quality or Best Performance and I tryed both ways in Quake 4 and it REALLY made a difference.

Here it is just incase your wondering:

http://img243.imageshack.us/img243/1776/poopershq5.jpg

There is also another option that lets you choose from a list of rendering options.

http://img53.imageshack.us/img53/3288/poopersui3.jpg

---

Yes I spell bad, but remimber Mighty are the stupid.

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Set that to "let the application decide". It will cause problems with most games. You need to set those graphics properties INSIDE a game's options menu.

The only other thing I can think of is this: "Memory Interface: 128-bit". The memory on the card can only transfer 128 bits at a time. Most PCI-E cards can do twice that much and have around the same specs otherwise. So, perhaps it is that? I also don't know if the card has explicit support for HDR, so that might hinder things as well. It could also have some features removed since it is a lower end geforce 7X card.

I would think it's a solid card, though. There could also be other factors ... like, how busy is the system other than playing the game?

You can activate some things in bios to try to speed things up, like fast write. That can cause problems sometimes I've heard.

I also noticed you're using internet explorer ... you should probably take care of that.

---

Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

My suggestion would be to set it to Use the Advanced 3D Settings, then on the second pic you're gonna want to set "Anisotropic Mip Filter Optimization" and "Anisotropic Sample Optimization" to "On" and that will improve FPS a little. I don't know exactly why Nvidia chose to have them default to Off, there's no noticable loss in image quality with them on (unless you take screenshots of the same place in a game and compare them side-by-side).

FEAR is overhyped crap IMHO. Doom 3 with parallax mapping. And worse guns.

---

o

YAY FOR BRINGING BACK A DEAD TOPIC AGAIN!!

ehem* I need to make this quick but I ran into ANOTHER problem, take a look.

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=18941

Sucky huh

---

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Amperage my man, amperage.

Be sure you aren't just using a generic PSU as well. A 500W generic can be weak as hell, while a 350W of a great one can be more 'powerful'. Don't be fooled.

Well now what do I do? I cant replace a psu, let alone know all the specs you need to know to buy one, like form factor, the type of power your mother board wants ect.

---

Yes I spell bad, but remimber Mighty are the stupid.

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You can replace a power supply ... there's four screws holding it in.
20 4/24 pin ATX is really all you need to know besides the power abilities.

You can check a few things before you freak out.

1) Does the power supply have enough power for the card (check the cards suggestion. I'm sure you've already done this, also)

2) Have you properly hooked up the power cables directly to the video card?

3) Also as Gorb said, check the output (amps) of the power cables and make sure it's high enough for the card. But generally, the "power" output (watts) should take the current into consideration.

If you get option 3 ... or if you did number 1 and 2 and everything checks out, you need a new power supply. Either it doesn't have enough current, or something isn't working properly.

It's actually more difficult to put a motherboard in and hook up all the LED pins for the case than it is to put in a new power supply.

---

Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Yeah, it's hard to mess up the plugs on a PSU, not impossible, but hard. Hooking up USB, Firewire and front-panel headers to your motherboard are more difficult, especially in an non-standard home-built scenario where not every plug is created equal, nor colour coded properly most of the time.

Crono said:
If you get option 3 ... or if you did number 1 and 2 and everything checks out, you need a new power supply.

what exactly? If 3 or 1 and 2 checks out I need a new one? I dont really understand what you said there sorry. Im in a computer class at the technical center, I DO know how to replace most computer parts I just dont like doing it to my own computer, I get scared .

Your right Crono, I checked before hand and I have a 420 watt power supply and the card needs "A minimum 350W system power supply (with 12V current rating of 20A or more)"

Anyway, my teacher, Mr. Johns, said that it sounds like a failing power supply because of the fact that it said it wasnt getting enough power AFTER it had been in the computer for like 3 weeks. But he also said that having lots of stuff plugged into your computer's power strip sucks the power from your computer too.

It could be that Im right on the line between enough power and not enough and yesterday I just happened to pass below for some reason. I wouldnt be surprised because my power strip only has like one slot empty on it, it's got

1.) Tower 2.) 19" monitor 3.) four speaker and bass system 4.) lamp 5.) something else I think ^^"

So perhaps I can try getting another power bar and plugging it into another outlet for my speakers and lamp whuda think yo?

One more thing, It hasnt came up with that message since so I is there any way to tell if my computer components are getting enough power, cuz I wana be able to see if doing that fixes the problem. I will upload a picture of my PSUs lable so you can see for yourself. What would happen if I just left my 'possibly' failing PSU in my computer till it finally gave out? Would it affect other parts at all?

Also on another computer note, my computer has also been acting alittle weird with other things too. A week ago some color task powered by photoshop (which I have) said it couldnt start and I got the error window when I logged in. The a few days ago and still now, I am getting a message about a DLL file for my webcam of all things failing or missing and that reinstalling the software might fix the problem. OH and about a week ago when I tried to log into my account with my password it said it couldnt for some reason and would log me in under a temperary account. After I logged off of that I was able to log in normally. This is all very strange.. :rolleyes:

You're scared to work on your own computer? Why? Because that's the one you paid money for? Unless you have a tendency to fry every computer you touch: don't be scared. As long as you don't drop things on the parts or have metal touch the circuitry you'll be fine.

All those problems sound very unreleated.

You could try plugging things into different outlets around your room ... but I doubt that is the issue (it's all the same circuit). Lamps generally use more power than computer speakers.

---

Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Ok if anything, this is the motherload of information. I took at picture AND recreated the PSU label in Photoshop. Perhaps this bring the issue into the light.

http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=3451297

(label recreation below)

http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=3451301

Now I cant really read these lables but Im guessing that if it wants a 12V current rating of 20A or more Then I look under "Current" under "-12" and according to that I have '1.0A.' Thats more then 20 right?

---

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Uh...the 12V rail is the first one, not the -12V rail. And if you look it says 18A which is just short, and thus could be your problem. (and 1.0A is just that...1 Ampere.)

Oh, and the fact I don't know the brand that that PSU is, is telling of the quality. I would honestly replace it with something that's not going to have a high chance of blowing and taking components with it. You can get a decent Enermax, Antec, Fortron, OCZ or Thermaltake one for ~$50.

Oh! So there is a chance of breaking other components when it blows?

<div class="abouttext">Message submitted 5 minutes after original post:</b></div>
Well ok guys, give me the need to know I guess. What am I gona need to know when I walk in the store? I know I need to know what amount of power my system board wants (or risk frying it) and the form factor of it. Anything else? If not what do I do to figure this stuff out?

BTW do you think this could be what is cusing my performance problems? Cuz I always thought it was strange how the game would kind of wave in speed, the game would be fine and then go a little slower then speed up again.

---

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Well if it's underpowered, it's just not gonna work, and in some cases depending on the board it has a very small chance of frying something, but that would be a lot of other factors. I meant in the event that the PSU quite literally blows, which does happen frequently with cheapo PSUs.

Basically you're just going for a standard ATX form-factor power supply with at LEAST 20A on the 12V rail, and honestly high quality ones will be 28A+. I'd recommend a 480W or greater since that's sort of the sweet spot for price nowadays.

Ok thanks man ^^. I have experience with building computers from school but just so I know, those come with instruction manuals right?

---

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Not guaranteed, but most of the bigger name brand ones do come with instructions (not that you REALLY need it because all the plugs are keyed to their appropriate sockets and you just need to unscrew the back (usually 4) screws and replace it. I can always take pictures of my setup and show you examples if you need it.

When I got the power supply for my current computer. I decided to get an Antec one, based on effeciency and cable management. I was very surprised to find a manual with it. I had never seen that before. I suppose it's common with some of the pricey stuff though.

---

Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

I suppose they asume its pritty easy lol and people know how to do it.

---

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My manual barely talks about hooking the thing up ... it talks about the power supply and all its "features" and crap.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Im not going to buy this one but was just wondering If I made a good choice.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817103937

I noticed that it showed quite a few close up pictures of the system board connector pins, is this for a reason? Do different mother boards have a different number of pins? I have no idea where you find the amperage on these things, but one of those guys said he ran it with a Geforce 7600 GS with no problems. I noticed it said it comes with 2 PCI-EX cables, the one that plugs into my card is a peripheral cable right?

What is messed up with this situation is that if I get this new PSU there is no way of even knowing if it fixed anything. That message isnt even coming up anymore so thats annoying.

Is there any tests I can do afterwards to tell if I fixed it?

---

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You can see that the main connector there is a 20-pin with the 4-pin extension attached, which can be slid on and off, so it's compatible with any current motherboards. The PCI-e connectors are the 6-pin ones that are standard power connectors on PCI-e video cards, instead of a 4-pin molex (that's the name of a plastic connector form in computer power supplies) like the ones used on say a 9800 Pro, and your IDE drives.

Looking into that one (seriously, just google up info on the PSUs if you need a diff. picture.) it has a really weird way of doing the 12V rails, or at least their explanation varies. But from the looks of it that one should have at least 30A.

[edit]
Would you mind giving me just a quick little jot of what you have in the system? I highly doubt you'd be stretching it, but it helps me understand a bit more.

It's got dual 12V rails, 19A and 17A.

Newegg said:
Output -- +3.3V@32A, +5V@35A, +12V1@17A, +12V2@19A, -12V@0.3A, +5VSB@2A

---

o

Gorbachev said:
Would you mind giving me just a quick little jot of what you have in the system? I highly doubt you'd be stretching it, but it helps me understand a bit more.

Sure, no problem.

• ABit Guru motherboard with a AMD Athlon 64 processor +3200. 2.4 Ghz

• 2 gbs of RAM

• Windows XP home

-140 gb hard drive, with 9 gbs free left

Hope that helps.

It's got dual 12V rails, 19A and 17A.

Newegg said:
Output -- +3.3V@32A, +5V@35A, +12V1@17A, +12V2@19A, -12V@0.3A, +5VSB@2A

Pretty sure it draws both from the same source though, from what I was reading and thus you basically just don't want to exceed 20A on either if you've got them fully loaded up.

What other items do you have drawing power, CD/DVD drives, etc.? Any other cards in slots?

I have one floppy drive, a cd-rw dvd drive, and a hard drive, and of course my video card thats it.

My biggest concern about this whole thing is that I will get a PSU that has to high of a voltage and it will fry my mother board. My teacher Mr. Johns said it like so:

"Be really carefull with that, if you put one in with to high a voltage and you turn it on a hear a POP thats it sigh... or the smell of burnt wires."

So yea, I looked at my mother board's manual and it states that it's a high performance board so I dono. Im going to bring the manual with me, so I guess whats more scary is that I CANT go any higher with the voltage without getting a new system board too!

Riiight, I have no idea what he's talking about. Seriously, is this guy teaching computers? The pins have set colour and voltage ratings. It's not going to magically have too much for your board.

The only time it's going to have a chance of being different is if it's one of the older Dells I believe that had the same pins but totally different and non-standard setups.

You don't have to worry about the voltage.

Either your teacher is trying to sound important, or he's talking about another situation. I've ran into more instructors who fit the former rather than the latter.

The magic of American Public Schools is that ANY teacher can teach a technology course. Or at least, that's what school boards think. :rolleyes:

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting Crono</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>You don't have to worry about the voltage.

Either your teacher is trying to sound important, or he's talking about another situation.
</DIV></DIV>

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting Gorbachev</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>Riiight, I have no idea what he's talking about. Seriously, is this guy teaching computers? The pins have set colour and voltage ratings. It's not going to magically have too much for your board.
</DIV></DIV>

So the the all knowing John is wrong? :shocked: :eek: hmmm, well he works alot with server computers perhaps thats it?? I just cant believe that what he said could be completely bogius.

However I found it very surprising to have it sound like the motherboard wasnt smart enough to say "YO PSU, HOMIE! That's a little to much power tone it down nigga, you read me?" That is what it does right?

None the less Im gona talk to the sales assoiate about it, man he's gona be busy with me. Do you think this could be why my graphics card isnt being as fast as Id expect it to be?

(oh no its back! ----> Hey all it's me Half-dude! )

Oh I wanted to add, I havent checked yet but I looked and my system board has one of those secondary square power plugs along with the primary power plug. Now Im not sure if my PSU has that plugged in but if it doesnt or simply doesnt have that cord should I use that plug if my new PSU comes with it?

Oh and this is probibly stupid, but do you have to install any software with a new PSU or do anything in the BIOS? I really hope not, BIOS scares me.

---

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What he said isn't bogus, it's just a non-issue with current power supplies. Everything is very standardized. So, like I said, you don't have to worry about it.

The "Basic In Out System" shouldn't scare you. It'd be more difficult if it wasn't there. Power supplies require no software. Just plug all the cables you have outlets to on the motherboard, hard drive(s), cd, fans, video card that you can and you'll be fine.

It's very simple to install and connect.

And, to be honest, the power supply (apparently) will most likely come with a manual. So, that'll help you too ... if you need it, which you wont.

---

Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

"Oh I wanted to add, I havent checked yet but I looked and my system board has one of those secondary square power plugs along with the primary power plug. Now Im not sure if my PSU has that plugged in but if it doesnt or simply doesnt have that cord should I use that plug if my new PSU comes with it?"

If you're talking about the 4-pin "P4" connector, and your current one doesn't have it plugged I'm pretty sure that you're underpowering some stuff (don't remember which but I would imagine peripherals like the vid card since it's got 12V rails, but there is a reason this is there.)

So if your board has this and your current PSU either doesn't have it, or isn't plugged in, this can cause problems. Often there's documentation with the motherboard stating never operate it without the 4-pin plugged in.

Here's an installation tutorial I googled.
http://www.fonerbooks.com/r_power.htm

That was a helpfull tut thank you. Well its about 15 till I go out and buy the new one, wish me luck.

---

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Ok Im back from Micro-Center and I got one for 79 bucks. I took your advice Gorbachev and got a 500W Thermaltake with double +12 rails, one 14A and the other 15A which as you know would supply me with a nice 29 amps.

I will attempt to write the info below:

OUTPUT:

| +3.3A | +5V | +12V (1) | +12V (2) | -12 V | +5 VSB

Max. Load | 22A | 32A | 14A | 15A | 0.3 A | 2A

Min. Load | 0.5A | 0.5A | 1.0A | 1.0A | 0.0 A | 0.0A

Load Reg. | bla bla bla

Ripple V(p-p) | bla bla bla

Pic: (the box even came with a nifty plasic handle on the top :cool: )

http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=3476726

<div class="abouttext">Message submitted 14 minutes after original post:</b></div>
Crap! My motherboard has a 20 pin power connector and this powersupply has a 24 pin connector ><!

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you should have gotten a 20 + 4 connection power supply. Run, take it back and get one with that feature.

You don't really need a 500W power supply for your current computer. If you grab one though, you wont need to get another one when you upgrade your computer next time (make sure it's 20 + 4 power connector for this reason)

Also, just to note, through testing, most dual rail 12V connectors, when combined, have less than the maximum current of both cables.

So, instead of 29A you'll probably get 25A at the most (which is still more than enough, I'm just pointing this out). It's part of the revision Intel demanded, since having one large current though 12V cables was deemed a bit dangerous.

I've also read that the best option is 3 12V rails.

---

Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Well, I does have the additional four pin connector. I also read a site and it says that most PSUs that have 24 pin connectors let you detach the last 4 pins so it will fit. Mine looks like it can do that cuz I see a ridge and line were it looks like it comes off.

So if that does come off whats the deal then? Will it still work ok? If so do you still say I should take it back? Is 500 Watts not a good amount?

P.S thank you for telling me that it will be 25 amps at the most, it's ok though I just want it to work.

**UPDATE**

Ok I checked the PSU manual and it DOES indeed pop off the end to make the 24 pins into 20. So I guess my only question is what negitive effects does this have on anything?

Also I failed to mention that I looked at my mother board manual and saw that it had only 20 pins. I havent actually looked at the board itself yet. I could be possible that it only showed 20 pins cuz its just a diagram right?

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You can most likely just slide the extra 4 pins off (this is not the same as the standard 4-pin connector that should have a seperate slot on the motherboard.)

It will work just fine if you slide it off, it's optional in case you needed the 24-pins.

Ok I got it all installed, it's running fine. Now just to find out how to get my GPU to function at full again 9_9.

---

Yes I spell bad, but remimber Mighty are the stupid.

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I bet you could just uninstall your vid card drivers and reinstall and it'll reset it all. Since I doubt it's at the BIOS level.

good idea.

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