Why 2 power leads?

[Packham]

Ok im a total noob so hopefully that will save folk trying to make me look worse than I already feel.

I have recently moved from AGP to my Asus 7900GTX and its all new to me.

On insterting and powering it up I discovered I have a cable that plugs in the back end of the card (Tower face end) with 2 female power sockets coming off it.

I have plugged 1 cable into it and it seems to work, but because im hot getting very much performance out of the card I thought it may need 2 power cables pluggin into it. On doing this, the PC trips off so I have unplugged it again.

Can anyone tell me what this is for as I've been on website after website and cant find an answer. Even the manual I got with the card only explains driver instalation.

Your help / advice would be greatly appreciate.

Many Thanks

Packham

 

[krillz]

Basically it's just the fact that the newer and more powerfull video cards need more power, the power it gets from the PCI-E slot is not enough and therefore you need to apply extra power to it, that's what those sockets are for on the card.

With your computer tripping out, well we can begin with the question. Is your PSU strong enough to power the card while playing or doing some other tasks that makes the card consume more power.

 

[Packham]

Hi Krillz, Thanks for the quick responce.

Ive got a 520W power supply on atm. With the 2 sockets being female i was assuming i was causing an electrical problem inside but now you mention this maybe that isnt the case?

So your saying that i really should have both power cables plugged into the power supply?

 

[krillz]

Yes a GTX need two power connectors, however on my brothers 8800 GTX it said in the manual to never plug in the power using a Y conector to plug it in to the card, was printed in bold even so I guess that's pretty important.
You need to use two seperate connections from your PSU.

Also 520W seems alright, but it depends on what more harware you are running, remember it's mostly the +12v rail that is important, my old 500W was worse than my friend 400W on the +12v rails causing my system to shut down and restart.

 

[Packham]

Ahh right, that makes sense really. Great stuff. Ill give it a whirl and get back to you on that. Thanks very much Krillz.

 

[Packham]

Hi Krillz, I have plugged a different power lead from the suply directly into the graphics card and it never tripped out. I can't wait to give a game a whirl and see if it makes any difference.

I play Everquest 2 and over the last week its been running really slow. I thought at first it was my connection (2 meg) so I have increased my connection to 20 meg now which obviously makes a lot of difference but still the stuttering persisted. Could it have been the card starting to struggle because it was working too hard do you think? Anyway, thanks again. Really appreciate the help.