On January 23 2011 08:26 2GRe-Play- wrote:
man the 400w psu is the issue, those old video card are Dragons asking for food in Alaska
the 9800GTX consume to much energy from that 400watts its not enough
Nvidia said u need at least 500watts
man the 400w psu is the issue, those old video card are Dragons asking for food in Alaska
the 9800GTX consume to much energy from that 400watts its not enough
Nvidia said u need at least 500watts
400W is not ideal, I know, but if it runs SC2 without issue it gets the job done. If you think that without an upgraded PSU my framerate issue will continue, I will have to consider it. However, if the poster above is correct in how PSU problems materialize then my problem is most definitely not the PSU for I have experienced nothing of that sort and my system has been reliably running for the past ~3 years.
On January 23 2011 07:40 Myrmidon wrote:
Yeah, PSU issues can cause serious problems, but not gaming performance degradation. But whether or not it's good for the system depends on the quality of the 400W PSU--this is an entirely separate issue than the system performance the OP is addressing though.
The issue is that it's a Gateway system. I don't think the CPU is going to be able to be overclocked because of motherboard restrictions.
Supposedly that motherboard supports AM2+ CPUs, but it's hard to tell which. This seems to suggest that at least some people have had success using a Phenom II on the motherboard, but with some issues. If you're just worried about SC2 performance, a Phenom II X2 would be fine. It'd be kind of weird upgrading from a quad core to a dual core, but whatever. With the first-gen Phenom TLB/Win7 issues and low clock speed, you'd be getting a lot better performance from a Phenom II or even Athlon II.
Yeah, PSU issues can cause serious problems, but not gaming performance degradation. But whether or not it's good for the system depends on the quality of the 400W PSU--this is an entirely separate issue than the system performance the OP is addressing though.
The issue is that it's a Gateway system. I don't think the CPU is going to be able to be overclocked because of motherboard restrictions.
Supposedly that motherboard supports AM2+ CPUs, but it's hard to tell which. This seems to suggest that at least some people have had success using a Phenom II on the motherboard, but with some issues. If you're just worried about SC2 performance, a Phenom II X2 would be fine. It'd be kind of weird upgrading from a quad core to a dual core, but whatever. With the first-gen Phenom TLB/Win7 issues and low clock speed, you'd be getting a lot better performance from a Phenom II or even Athlon II.
Thank you for the suggestion, I have done some research on the Phenom II X2 and it appears I can obtain one for ~80$, which is good for my budget if I can scrap the old one for ~40$ (probably an optimistic estimate). However, after doing some other research, I have found that gateways can be reliably overclocked using some back door methods and specific software, just not by much, so if I can't sell the thing for a reasonable price I'll try overclocking and overcoming the tlb problem before buying the suggested dual core. Nothing to lose if I end up trashing it I guess.
@Everyone else, I will explain in the spoiler why I would not like to invest in a new GPU or computer.
+ Show Spoiler +
On January 23 2011 08:02 Jago wrote:
Again, the PSU is not his problem. While 400W is a bit on the low side of things, if it was the cause of his issues, he'd be seeing lockups and random reboots, which is how "not enough juice" manifests itself. The OP is experiencing nothing of the sort.
However I do have to question the idea of applying a watercooler to an old videocard like 9800GTX. chances are, you could get a newer, faster, cooler videocard for the price of your GPU watercooling kit alone.
Again, the PSU is not his problem. While 400W is a bit on the low side of things, if it was the cause of his issues, he'd be seeing lockups and random reboots, which is how "not enough juice" manifests itself. The OP is experiencing nothing of the sort.
However I do have to question the idea of applying a watercooler to an old videocard like 9800GTX. chances are, you could get a newer, faster, cooler videocard for the price of your GPU watercooling kit alone.
On January 23 2011 07:58 2GRe-Play- wrote:
that PSU 400w is killing u bro, other thing to take into account why will u invest in a Watercooling whe u should better sell that card + the money u will waste in Watercooling = a better video card
that PSU 400w is killing u bro, other thing to take into account why will u invest in a Watercooling whe u should better sell that card + the money u will waste in Watercooling = a better video card
I got a good watercooling kit for 60$ that should (under guarantee) reduce my temp to the 70-80C range and I doubt I could sell a thing that has probably undergone overheating damage for the past year. The newer gen nvidia GPUs are on sale for a couple hundred dollars to several hundred dollars and given that my only intention for my GPU is to run SC2 without issue, I don't think I want to invest voluminous amounts of money in a new one that may require the water cooling anyway.
On January 23 2011 08:26 luKrek wrote:
You should not keep anything but your hdd from that setup, none of the parts is good enough for sc2 really.
You should not keep anything but your hdd from that setup, none of the parts is good enough for sc2 really.
On January 23 2011 09:18 Marradron wrote:
At some point you might just want to invest in a new computer. As some people have said for about 600-700 you can get a setup that will run sc2 very well.
At some point you might just want to invest in a new computer. As some people have said for about 600-700 you can get a setup that will run sc2 very well.
My computer meets and exceeds the recommended requirements for SC2, which is good, because all I want it to do is run SC2 (1v1 only even) without issue. Since it is not doing exactly what it should, I want to fix it, but not completely trash it, because I don't even intend to run any newer games on it either. I would be seriously considering your suggestions and would be all for a new desktop I build myself, but I'll be buying a laptop in the coming years as I will be traveling a lot more so investing in a new desktop is a no go for me.
Also thanks for all the help - I've received more information here than I would have gotten over a week on my own. I know now that I am probably not justified in naming the topic 'good computer', but technology really pulled a fast one on me!