PSU Query

[saruman-23]

this isn't for me, as my pc's working fine. it's a friend of mine. he recently upgraded his computer. i don't know all of the specs - he doesn't even know them himself. but i think he has a Nvidia GEForce 6800GT

however, his comp should be on par with mine. i can run FEAR on full, HL2 on full, CS:S on full, Fable on full. however, and i list those particular games on purpose, he can't run any of them above half settings. CS:S lags like a whore unless he really turns the settings down. he's only got FEAR on half settings, and it's still a bit jumpy.

i feel he did something wrong when he upgraded it, but he's not sure. i'm wondering if it could be a power supply issue. i wonder this simply because he didn't upgrade his PSU, and when i asked him what power it was, he said; "it's 230V".. which, regradless of how much he argued, simply tells him which power socket he can plug it into.

so, to conclude. my friend's pc should be pretty good, but it's really not. he upgraded recently to specs i don't know, but he didn't upgrade his PSU. could his PSU be causing this lack of power in his pc, or will it be something else?

[Agent Law]

Specs would REALLY be helpful. Even just hardware (CPU, RAM, GPU). Insufficient power would cause crashes but not sluggish behavior, IIRC.

[lucky644]

Format.

[Noirceur]

It kind of depends on who made his 6800 card and if it's for AGP/PCI-E. The better AGP cards tend to be more power hungry.

[saruman-23]

i'll try to find out his specs; and which manufacturer made his card.

while we wait though; would it be theoretically possible for a low power PSU to cause shit performance?

[spartan]

I once dealt with a rig that had a PSU that supplied inadequate power to a 6600GT (AGP) and the card downgraded its own preformance. The problem wasn't so much "inadequate power" as much as it was an overly fickle 12v rail, deviating an entire precentile from specified voltage... ie, not good. Found a new one, slid 'er in, and the card acted like normal.

On the bright side, if this happens your card will tell you and you will know there is a problem. If your guy is the kind of person who clicks through "Warning:" messages, this could be the case. Though I doubt it.

Sounds like he's had the system for a while and has some spyware and stuff on it. Though it's hard to be certain - you're trying to compare your rig to his yet we don't know the specs for either. You could have the same card but he could have a shittier CPU, Memory, HDD, anything.

Also try checking his process bar (tab on the CTRL-ALT-DELETE menu). Find out how much RAM he has and what's consuming it. Ideally you want to run as few programs as possible while you run those games.

[Wallrod]

Make sure he's plugged in the legacy power to the card if there is a place for it, my 6600GT has it and the card automatically goes into 'shitty mode' if it doesn't get enough juice.

[saruman-23]

okay, thanks for that lads - from the sound of it it could be the PSU. he's not so stupid as to click through Warning messages, without checking them. and as far as i know he does defrags etc. quite frequently. i'll tell him about this legacy power thing.

i'll leave this here for now, i might come back to it with the specs for his comp, we'll see what's going on. thanks again!

[Mirsky]

The other problem might be driver related. If he's just installed this over the top of an old card (especially if it was an Ati) then windows sometimes gets confused and all sorts of thinks can go wacky. If need be you should be able to google driver registry cleaners that might help quite a big

[lucky644]

Format...?

If the vid/mobo/cpu etc etc were changed, you need a format.

[saruman-23]

Format...?

If the vid/mobo/cpu etc etc were changed, you need a format.

i changed my vid, mobo, cpu, ram and dvd drive. and i didn't need a format :P

[lucky644]

i changed my vid, mobo, cpu, ram and dvd drive. and i didn't need a format :P

I've had many a pc have windows refuse to work after upgrading cpu & mobo, or severely reduced performance.

After ANY major upgrade a format should be mandatory.

[spartan]

I've had many a pc have windows refuse to work after upgrading cpu & mobo, or severely reduced performance.

After ANY major upgrade a format should be mandatory.

Not mandatory, but ideal.

Windows marries itself to the mobo. It's possible that you can change out a motherboard and still be able to run a copy of Windows that was installed under the previous board, but any time I have ever done this I have experienced many a BSOD and crashes that do not persist after I format and reinstall Windows on the new board.

Changing CPUs, RAM, Optical Drives, and Graphics cards should be no issue so long as they are compatible with the system and so long as you make sure previous software (graphics card drivers are a big culprit) has been thoroughly cleaned.

[lucky644]

Not mandatory, but ideal.

Windows marries itself to the mobo. It's possible that you can change out a motherboard and still be able to run a copy of Windows that was installed under the previous board, but any time I have ever done this I have experienced many a BSOD and crashes that do not persist after I format and reinstall Windows on the new board.

Changing CPUs, RAM, Optical Drives, and Graphics cards should be no issue so long as they are compatible with the system and so long as you make sure previous software (graphics card drivers are a big culprit) has been thoroughly cleaned.

I've gone from a 2200+ to a 3000+ before and windows refused to boot.

[spartan]

I've gone from a 2200+ to a 3000+ before and windows refused to boot.

Hm. I've done the same with Semprons and P4s and not formatted, but never with an XP.

[StandingCow]

I have upgraded Processors a few times and had no issues... motherboards are another issue.

Recently I went single to dual core and didnt reformat, its working fast as ever.

[marty]

I've done a successful mobo swap without reformatting -- probably because it was a slow-as-shit unstable system to start with, so the degradation in performance and reliability wasnt noticable :p

[Prowl]

you dont need to format for anything other than a mobo swap, you can't change your processor significantly without a mobo swap so windows should not cause any significant error, the only exception I've heard of is going from single to dual core cos there are issues in the way windows handles multiple threads which can cause slow down on the dual cores.

as for this being a PSU issue, if its only slow performance and not crashes then it would not be near the top of the list of possible causes for me. I would do a proper driver clean and reinstall of the graphics card as my first check.

Obviously a new PSU is advised if the one he had before wasn't a good quality high output one, but not mandatory in this instance until you have a run logical checks on why he is having these issues, guessing on which parts need replacing is sloppy thinking.