trinz21

I wonder if there is a site that tells you a whole bunch of graphics card, and what type of recommended power is needed, including the amount of AMPS on the 12V rail. Would be really helpful so buyer's don't under power their card. Coz i think that was the problem, less amps on the 12v line, as i said i only had 16A on 12V rail..

Possibly GPU problem too. Thanks guys for the help

Lagger

It's memory and no PSU will help it. i saw the pattern on the screen much more than once since 1986.
And i don't think it's the PSU to blame. A lot of systems run these cards with weaker ones. (In fact, my 2 6800's SLI are powered by a 420w PSU.)
As for the overheating: the temperatures of yours are only dangerous for the weak chips. So i guess your card had had defects from the very beginning.
You could replace RAM or the card itself (the latter much simpler )

trinz21

You are possibly correct. Thankyou for the advice. Which ones is the better choice in gfx cards now adays? Im thinking a x800xl AGP im keeping away from the nvidia cards after this incident and a waste of my 280 dollars (AUD).

Was wondering what your Amps are on your 12V line

Lagger

The fault is not exactly nVidia's -- they do not supply RAM for the card manufacturers. i have always bought ASUS cards with nVidia (since the appearance of the latter) and never had regret. But now i am also looking in the direction of ATI, since i'm upset by the politics of nVidia.
i bought a new MOBO (and BTW this is a Motherboard forum, isn't it? ) with i975 chipset and 2 PCIe slots, planning to use my 2 nVidia cards in SLI, and found out i can't do it dew to the restrictions in nVidia drivers. Great! Now i'm thinking of buying two ATI cards and using Crossfire. As for who is better - nVidia or ATI - i don't think they differ much. According to the benchmarks i saw recently (meaning top models), they're almost identical. 3-5% difference doesn't make the weather (as they say in Russia) What matters to me is just fair play, is all.

Lagger

i'll check it out as soon as i get home.

ok. i looked at the PSU manufacturer's site: i got 2 lines in fact - 10A & 15A
that is quite sufficient for my dual-core CPU (P930) and 2x6800's.
and i didn't mention 5 HDD's (300GB Maxtors) in the system, did i?

squall_leonhart

a computer consisting of 1hd 1 optical drive, a Geforce 4, 512mb etc is about 350w with 20a on the 12v rail

a computer consisiting of 2hd, 2 optical drives and a geforce FX + 512mb, i would say your safest to get a 480w psu with atleast 26a on the 12v rail.

trinz21

hmmm can memory failures of a gfx card be caused by not enough power to the card?

Lagger

it could be, but i don't think so. at least my asus 6800 warned me, when power was insufficient (that is when i forgot to connect aux power directly to the card), and switched to lower freqs.
in your case i may be wrong though. so if you can push your card into more powerful comp, try it.

trinz21

im getting a 450W Antec, so hopefully that would be sufficient with both fans on.

Sometimes when i boot up, i already get artifacts with the 6800GS. Ill try it once i get the new PSU.

ruamoku

I ran a Celeron D 2.6; FX 5600 AGP OC 256 MB; 2 HDDs; 2 DVD writer optical drives and 2 GB of DDR RAM with a 250 watt PSU with 14A on the 12V rail. I only got artifacts when I pushed the GPU core from 325 Mhz to 375 Mhz, and the memory from 400 Mhz to 471 Mhz. I got clear artifacts in BF2, the only game I tested these settings on. There were no other graphics problems. Ramping the settings back 10 Mhz in both saw no more artifacts, with no stability issues from the PSU (now updated with a 7800GS OC AGP on the way).
I'm using Z-Tweaked 91.28 drivers.
I think your 6800 may be naffed, shame about the voided warranty.
As someone else said, try it in another reasonable machine before you bin it, or you could paint it ni**le pink and sell it to a sucker -just joking on the last bit lol
Regards

Edit:
PS ATI X8** series cards aren't SM 3.0 capable, so you'll miss some nice eye candy. Check out the warranties closely first - I'm stating the obvious - but don't write Nvidia cards off altogether - in the past 6 from Asus, Albatron, Gainward and Powercolour, I've never had a duff one.

Off topic for a motherboard forum - apologies!!