Just ordered my 5850, is it defective or do I just need more power?

[Sparkn]

I just bought an ATI 5850 and my current set up goes...
Rosewill RP550-2 550W
AMD Phenom II X3-720 OC@3.2GHz
4GB RAM DDR2
Only have 1 DVD drive and 1 SATA HD
and of course my new 5850..


I'm not sure if this is the GPU's problem or if my PSU just can't dish out the energy needed to keep my computer afloat. When I try to play lower graphically stressful games such as Warcraft 3 or Counter-Strike 1.6 the GPU works fine. However, as soon as I play Counter Strike Source and enter a game, the screen freezes and starts artifacting. I've noticed this with most of the "newer" games. Besides that my computer runs fine, it only freezes when I'm playing a graphically intensive game. Could this warrant for me to buy better PSU or could it possibly be something else? thanks guys

 

[inzone]

Can you be a little more specific on the 5850 , Model , Brand.

 

[inzone]

The 5850 requires a minimum 500w psu in the computer and you have a 550w , however the psu you have is a Brand that I would not ever recomend as the Rosewill name is not a quality name in the psu buisness. I would say that it is the low end of the quality list and therefore most likly the reason for your video card freezing up and underperforming. You could definatly get a much better quality psu and be 100% better off.

Antec High Current Gamer Series HCG-620 620W ATX12V v2.3 / EPS12V v2.91 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply
$64.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371048

This would be a good improvement and for $65 it won't break the bank. I don't know your financial situation and you can cartianly buy what you can afford , so it all depends on what you want to put in youir computer.

Antec EarthWatts EA-650 GREEN 650W ATX12V v2.3 SLI Ready CrossFire Certified 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply $68.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371044

Antec EarthWatts Series EA-750 Green 750W ATX12V v2.3 SLI Certified CrossFire Certified 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Continuous Power Supply $99.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371051

With the Earthwatts series the psu does not come with a power cord so you have to use the one that is on the psu you have. Again the choice is yours and what you want to spend , Antec is a well respected psu maker and the quality is there.

 

[Sparkn]

Yeah, I feel as if it is a PSU problem. I just ordered this OCZ power supply though...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341018

It's about $50 with a promotion/rebate, would this work fine with the 5850?

 

[ko888]

For a system using a single Radeon HD 5850 OCed graphics card AMD specifies a minimum of a 500 Watt or greater power supply that has a combined +12 Volt continuous current rating of 26 Amps or greater and that has at least two 6-pin PCI-Express supplementary power connectors.

Your Rosewill Performance Series 550W (RP550-2), with its combined +12 Volt continuous current rating of 35 Amps and its one 6 pin PCI-Express Connector is capable power-wise but is one 6 pin PCI-Express Connector short of the two required by the Radeon HD 5850.

You've got eight 4-pin Molex Peripheral Connectors on that power supply so you'll need to use a dual 4-pin Molex to 6-pin PCI-Express power dongle to supply that missing connector.

The OCZ ModXStream Pro Series 700W (OCZ700MXSP), with its combined +12 Volt continuous current rating of 46 Amps and its one 6-pin and one 6+2-pin PCI-Express Connectors is sufficient to power your system with enough spare capacity for you to do any overclocking of the CPU and GPU if wish to do so.

 

[lpedraja2002]

Go with a Corsair PSU if you can, been reading only good things from them. I have an OCZ 700wGameXStream and I had to RMA it (once or twice, not sure) in the past 4 years. Good stuff but I would buy a better brand for sure.

 

[Sparkn]

Yeah, I figured I was done ordering from unreliable companies so I cancelled my OCZ. I'll probably be getting the $65 620W one mentioned above. Strangely enough my current PSU already has two native 6pin PCI-E adapters... and I plugged both of them in but I still got the same results. Who knows, thanks for all the help guys!!

 

[treefrog07]

Not addressed yet: Have you installed the latest HD 5850 AMD drivers?

 

[Kari]

sort of points to a memory problem, imo...
download memtest86+ , make bootable media (cd/usb memory), boot from it, let it run several passes, see if there are any errors reported
http://www.memtest.org/

this will the test the systems main memory, not the cards...

 

[Sparkn]

Yeah, I did the memtest and my memory seems to be fine. I'm guessing it's a PSU problem however could it possibly be my motherboard? I'm using the M4A78 Plus and it uses some thing to control the voltage on certain components. My cpu is known to go to overclock to higher speeds but b/c of my mobo I can't set the voltage any higher. As stated above apparently my PSU can go up to 36A, which should be fine but why isn't my GPU working properly? Would getting a bigger PSU solve this or maybe it's my mobo problem?