PSU amps and graphic cards

[carod]

When my 9800 pro died i decided to give my agp system one last lease of life and was lucky enough to get a gainward bliss 7800GS (interesting card as it's actually a 512 meg 7900GT core give or take, but was only available in europe), i read somewhere that the card requires at least 20 amps on the 12 rail so i was a bit worried as my tagan 420W only supplied 20 amps lol. When i first installed the card i got weird results...sometimes windows would boot fine and if it did everything was stable...but sometimes it would load with glitches and i'd have to reset. Suspecting the psu i've gone out and bought a Hiper Power 720W psu with 4 x 12V rails at 16A each to a total of 672W which is roughly 50A by my figuring...now my question after all that is...if my card needs at least 20 amps but the 12V connector i plug into it is only capable of feeding 16A, does this mean i need some kind of 2 into 1 connector so i can combine 2 of the 12V rails to give 32A? I ask this because after installing the Hiper PSU i still seem to have the same problem with glitches although not as often i don't think.

If it matters specs are (if i remember right)

AMD AM2 4200 X2
Asrock am2nf3vsta (not great i know but when my old athlon xp fried i didn't want to ditch the expensive agp card)
2 gig of value ram clocked at 800 5 5 5 15
Gainward Bliss 7800GS 512 set at 'factory' overclock (450 core 625 mem)
2 x 160GB ide drives
1 x optical
Hiper Power Type M 730W psu

Weird since if it boots fine the thing will run problem free for days...surfing, playing oblivion, 2 instances of F@h, but sometimes it just boots covered in artefacts.

Sorry for the rambling post, any help appreciated

Carod

 

[darkguset]

The short answer is no, you do not need such a connector. The reason is, when NVIDIA asks for 20A on a rail, it is not for the VGA only, they take into account that other devices in your PC will be sharing this line, and hence they ask for a beefy line, so whatever is left of it, there will still be enough juice to power your VGA properly. Now regarding the artefacts, it could be due to your VGA - either damaged or overheating or overclocked. Try it in another system and see if it does the same. Also, you may remove the heatsink and check the core if it is "chipped" or cracked anywhere. If that is the case, then there is nothing you can do about it, but to get a new one. If it is the clocks, then lower them and make a new BIOS with lower clocks (usually the memory) and flash your card with the new BIOS.