GoodGuy
Posts: 1506
Joined: 5/17/2006
From: Cologne, Germany
Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: emcgman
Has anyone heard of Windows Vista completely shutting down when trying to run a full screen 3d type game.
There are 2 possible reasons:
- 1) The video card needs external ("additional") power (some cards have a black plug which you're supposed to connect to the PSU). There are cases where a card would run (even though it receives power from the PCIe bus only), but where starting a 3D-game would result in system shutdown or "soft"-reset, as the BIOS detects a failure, or...
- 2) the power supply doesn't deliver the required ampère-level on the +12V rail (this would indeed result in an abrupt [and complete] shutdown everytime), or it's not able to provide a stable output (most noname PSUs aren't stable enough for power-hungry components).
Such a shutdown happened to me when I bought an ATI 9800 Pro ages ago, as the card required 16A (!), there was even a red paper note in the retail box, stressing out the card would need a PSU with a min. of 16A (+12V). IIRC, I could boot, but the system would shut down right after getting to the desktop, as my PSU delivered 12A only. The card itself did not pull/require the 16A (my guess would be like 3A-5A), in comparison: a Geforce 7600 GT pulls 3.3 Ampere), but the sum of PC components max'ed out the supplied ampere value.
Modern cards, say an ATI HD 4870 X2 alone will pull 22.4 Ampere.
If the video card would overheat you'd see blocky gfx or artefacts, totally wrong colors, etc., or a soft-reset. An overheating card wouldn't result in a shutdown, neither BIOS nor Windows do that if a video card is overheating.
Please post your PSU specs, means brand, volt/ampère levels for all rails [ie. 3.3 volt, +12V etc.etc.], and tell me what video card you're using (brand/model).
quote:
ORIGINAL: Obsolete
Or possibly, not enough wattage.
The Watt value gives you an idea in what "division" a given PSU would play, but that's all, since the only interesting values are the ampere levels, PLUS whether a PSU is able to deliver stable Volt/Ampere levels or not.
A 430 Watts brand PSU could be totally sufficient to provide say some stable 20A on the +12Volt rail, but a noname PSU with 570 Watts may not be able to deliver more than let's say 3 Volt on the +3.3 Volt rail and way less than 20A on the +12V rail on full load, for example.
Watts for PSUs is a bit like the Watts PMPO value japanese and chinese companies love to use, a 70 Watts PMPO loudspeaker for your computer usually has around 7 (real) Watts, means IF measured in a realistic environment and not just in a distance of 1 Meter (IIRC, the latter is the spec for PMPO). PMPO is rather a marketing tool (or a tool to fool people), and this goes for PSU Watts too, to some extent. If you buy audio equipment (car, PC, home entert.) then go for the Watt (Sinus) value, to avoid frustration. 
< Message edited by GoodGuy -- 3/1/2010 11:57:18 PM >
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