scoobymoo

My video card went **** up at the weekend due to an over enthuastic bout of overclocking it trying to get far cry to run at a decent detail level. I was using an athlon 1800, geforce 4200ti and 512 mb generic pc2700 in an MSI 746f ultra mobo. I've just ordered an athlon 2800 (barton), 512mb kingston pc3200 ram (just in case its the ram thats gone not the video card) and a radeon 9800 pro iceQ. My question is do people think I need a bigger power supply I have a 350watt on there at the moment?

GC8

No; not if its a genuine 350 Watt output; most cheap power supplies can not provide anything like their 'rated' output when tested though. A lot struggle to maintain 150 Watts on the 12v rail.

You mentioned that you werent sure whatd failed; surely if it was the video adapter or the system memory then the device wouldnt have POST'd and it would have returned an error beep code? If it is silent Id suspect the system board first.

Simon

scoobymoo

Hi,
The system appears to boot (ie fans come on and hard disk starts spinning) but you just get garbage on the monitor (always the same garbage though) and then it locks up, the reason I thought it might be the video card is because I was overclocking it (although not by much) also it didn't happen as I was playing but started when I switched on the next day, do you think I need a new mobo?

GC8

not from what you have said there no; but remote diagnosis is really difficult. Do you hear any beeps when the system boots? Does the video adapter always display 'garbage' or does it show the BIOS splash screen clearly? If it shows anything clearly Id suggest re-installing your video adapter drivers at least if not remastering the system. Its unusual to show nonsense all the time as a failed adapter usually will not pass POST, it can happen when certain video adapter memory fails though as it isnt all tested.

Simon

Nick

Power supply calculator: http://www.adecy.com/psu/

It's important to look at the specs on your psu. Here's mine as an example:
Globalwin Sapphire Super Silent 19dBA 450W +3.3v=28a, +5v=45a, +12v=22/24a
These should be listed on the top of your psu. Can you post them & also the psu make?

scoobymoo

I reset the cmos last night and its now making 2 fast beeps followed by a long beep which I believe means my ram is knackered. Have decided to rebuild the system with a new motherboard and case now any reccomendations for the mobo and case/power supply?

GC8

Id expect two short beeps to indicate that POST had detected failure in an attached device: one long beep would imply that POST had been completed sucessfully. As all BIOS manufacturers use differing beep codes Id suggest that you find out which manufacturer makes your BIOS and check the error codes here: www.bioscentral.com

DominicA

BTW, i get the impression that everyone reckons farcry needs 1GB ram to run well...

what would scooby do

I use a £60 antec PSU @400W to power an amd athlon 3200+ with an ATI Radeon 9800 pro ,2hdd's and 2 DVD burners, 1 dvd player - works without any issues - as mentioned above it's all about the output levels of the PSU..

p.s. the heavier the psu generally the better made it is