Two questions (3850 AGP and 4870 x2)

[mortonww]

I have a 4870x2 installed in my homebuilt system. I'm not sure when it happened, but when I try to play a game all of the speech in the intro scenes is sped up like 1.5x. What does this mean? How do I stop this? I'm running Catalyst v 9.9

Also, I'm thinking about adding an AGP 8X 3850 to my Dell Dimension 4600 as a part of its Windows 7 upgrade. I think the power supply is around 250-300 W. Should I be fine?

I'm also adding 2 GB of DDR 400 (for a total of 2.5).

 

[hunter315]

A 3850 will require more power than a 300 watt PSU, if you havent OC'ed your CPU then you wont get much benifit from a 3850 over a 4650 which will consume less power and run cooler. I would be willing to run a 4650 on that PSU.

What are the full system specs on the machine that is giving you the issues? I doubt its a graphics related problem.

 

[mortonww]

Wow, thanks for the recommendation. I wouldn't have expected a 4000 series card to draw less power than a 3000. I guess I'll get the 4650, then!

Core i7 920 @ 2.67 GHz
6 GB OCz Platinum @ 1066 MHz
WD Caviar Black 640 GB
Intel DX58SO motherboard
and the 4870X2

 

[hunter315]

I think i may have found the issue, go through and manually set the voltages and timings on your ram, that is often what causes sound loops and lockups and may also be causing your speed issue with sound.

Each new generation comes with a die shink, smaller transistors use less power, so you can get the same processing power for less electrical power, like the 5870 using slightly more than a 4870 but performing similarly to a 4870x2

 

[mortonww]

Makes sense. I'll be buying a 4670, then. The speed issue is with the video and the sound, though. And I wasn't having this problem until weeks after I had my system built. But about setting the memory voltages:

I did try to clock my RAM up to the spec that OCz advertizes ( 1600 MHz 7-7-7-24) but I couldn't get any stability out of the setup. CPU 16 x 200, RAM^, multiplier 8

 

[hunter315]

Did you remember to up the voltage to 1.65? OCZ ram tends to require the voltage that it claims and cant be stably any lower. Most of their ram uses 1.9 volts but they couldnt do that for the i7 so i imagine that their 1.65 volt offerings can be difficult to get stable.

Did you change anything prior to having the problem? Maybe updated the drivers for something?

 

[mortonww]

I'm not really sure. I did up the voltage to 1.62. The next option my motherboard offered after that was 1.66, so I decided not to go there. It may or may not have happened when I upgraded to Catalyst 9.7...? I don't know what's going on.