Is my Leadtek 7600GT AGP card underpowered?

ghostwalker

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Apr 21, 2006
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I was on these forums a few weeks ago seeking advice on whether or not a new graphics card I had bought (the Leadtek AGP 7600GT) was faulty or not. I contacted the company I had bought it from and they sent me a replacement but exactly the same problem occurred again. This would lead me to believe that the problem lies not with the graphics card but with my system itself (or the graphics card drivers?).

The problem is this: When playing games on my computer, with the graphics card installed, I get varying levels of artifacting going on. They seem to be a bit random, for instance last night I was playing the demo of Mark of Chaos and all seemed well on the first map but then the subsequent map had considerable artifacting going on. I also noticed it when I ran 3D Mark 05:

http://img174.imageshack.us/img174/5224/3dmark05samplend1.jpg
http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/7738/3dmark05sample2mq0.jpg
http://img174.imageshack.us/img174/8585/3dmark05sample3fa1.jpg

It can’t be a heat issue as when monitoring the card, it doesn’t get above about 53 C.

I can only now think of two logical reasons for these errors. The first is that there is a problem with the graphics card drivers. I'm not really sure about this though as I have the manufacturers latest drivers installed (from Leadtek/Winfast). The second is that I have a feeling it could be related to the card being underpowered. I'm running an Enermax EG365AX PSU running at 350W. I thought at first that this should be ok as it is recommended to run the card with a min 300W PSU, but I have quite a few other components running off it. I have a DVD RW, a CD RW, 2 HD's, floppy disk drive, and then the motherboard itself.

Is it possible that the PSU is not powerful enough? Does anyone have any other suggestions of what the problem may be? Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.
 

cleeve

Illustrious
You got a bad card... return it.

A faulty PSU would cause hard crashing, not artifacts.

On second thought, I have heard of people having cards run incorrectly with iunsufficient power, but it's rare. Still, 300w is pretty low. You might want to explore that avenue by borrowing a friend's PSU, or trying the card on a friend's machine...
 

ghostwalker

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Two bad cards in a row?!

I wasn't neccesarily suggesting that my PSU may be faulty, only that I may need a more powerful one to support my system.
 

alexs3d2

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I have the same graphics card as you do and I also have a 300W PSU from Zalman. I don't get any artifacts, but I am sure the temperature gets upto 70°C when playing. (But I check it with Rivatuner's ingame OSD, because as soon as I exit the game it falls to around 50°C and then 46.
 

pauldh

Illustrious
That PSU should be adequate. First make sure that you plugged a regular molex connector (not one marked fan only) into the 7600GT. If you want to try drawing less power, disconnect whatever drives you can and then boot up the computer. The two opticals and 2 HDD's are all pulling from the 12v rail, just like the video card. Also, make sure you installed the mobo's chipset drivers.
 

ghostwalker

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Ok, I think I sorted it. I tried a trick I've seen a few people try, where they deselect an option in the display>advanced>troubleshoot window called 'write combining' or something. Seemed to do the trick just fine. I think I may have lost a few fps though but its worth it.

Does anyone know what this 'write combining' thing does?

Thanks for your replies guys.