hello everyone. im a general lightcore hardware enthusiast. i designed my pc few years ago aiming at a future crossfire upgrade that would hopefully be a good price.
so my specs are:
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 on an Asus P5K (P35 Intel) crossfire ready
2 x sata maxtor harddrives and 1 x sata dvdrom and just 1 MB chasis fan
my PSU is a hiper 580w, heres a direct link:
http://www.hipergroup.com/products.php?lv=3&cate=1&type=7&pid=15
so at the time i bought a nvidia 8800gt which was the best i could get for my money, and i thought id upgrade to a future crossfire lowend card or even a higher end.
recently i bought a MSI HD 5850 twin razor card to replace the nvidia card with. unfortunately this card would crash so badly on almost any 3d game or application. now the card says it only requires a 500W psu.
I am not a fan of overcloking, i prefer stock settings with maximum performance setups to get the most out of my parts for gaming. i removed 1 hdd and the chasis fan and the dvd rom and the graphics was still unstable. i have returned the card now having concluded that it was my PSU, but the issue now is, how do i find out a suitable card that wont surge my psu? or in other words, how can i tell how good my psu is, with simple testing, to know what is the best upgrade out there for me...
ATI HD 5850 according to the benchmarks on this site draws a good 280w on load, and my cpu does 120w or so. i still dont get how my system can be unstable.
any help would be greatly appreciated
so my specs are:
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 on an Asus P5K (P35 Intel) crossfire ready
2 x sata maxtor harddrives and 1 x sata dvdrom and just 1 MB chasis fan
my PSU is a hiper 580w, heres a direct link:
http://www.hipergroup.com/products.php?lv=3&cate=1&type=7&pid=15
so at the time i bought a nvidia 8800gt which was the best i could get for my money, and i thought id upgrade to a future crossfire lowend card or even a higher end.
recently i bought a MSI HD 5850 twin razor card to replace the nvidia card with. unfortunately this card would crash so badly on almost any 3d game or application. now the card says it only requires a 500W psu.
I am not a fan of overcloking, i prefer stock settings with maximum performance setups to get the most out of my parts for gaming. i removed 1 hdd and the chasis fan and the dvd rom and the graphics was still unstable. i have returned the card now having concluded that it was my PSU, but the issue now is, how do i find out a suitable card that wont surge my psu? or in other words, how can i tell how good my psu is, with simple testing, to know what is the best upgrade out there for me...
ATI HD 5850 according to the benchmarks on this site draws a good 280w on load, and my cpu does 120w or so. i still dont get how my system can be unstable.
any help would be greatly appreciated