Is My PSU hurting my VC?

[HoserEh]

So I have had to RMA my new XFX Double D 7970, it was artifacting and tearing at stock speeds, and OC'ing was the pits......memory didn't OC at all even with the GPU underclocked.I got my replacement card......OCing is once again the pits.....Memory oc gives me worse performance in any Bench and the GPU jus spits out driver crashes on anything over 5mhz over stock, and tonight it started tearing.....at stock speeds and 56 Celcuis under load.Either XFX has poopy qc or I got the worst luck in cards.But I thought it could, jus could be my PSU, I have a OCZ modstream pro 700 watt. I know I know, but hardwaresecrets did not see anything major in the filtering, well it did not have the best in 12v filtering, but it was with in specs, plus i got it on sale for 60 bucks.Could my PSU be causing my new VC to act like a big pile of poo?

[supaflyx3]

It's your PSU.

[HoserEh]

.......kinda figured......a question in the same lines......my card has ASIC rating of 58% would that limit my OC headroom, nevermind the card is hardware limited to increasing voltage.

[sswilson]

Short answer is that yes, a less than perfect PSU can have an affect on your vid card. Unfortunately, without a quality PSU to swap in there's no guarantee it'll resolve your issue.

Back in the day (Personal experience during the ATI 9600 or 1950pro eras), Sapphire's claim for just about any issues with certain models was that the PSU wasn't up to snuff and that they only recommended a few (I believe it was 3 different models last time I was on their forums.... ;) ) brands / models. They were half right, but weren't telling the whole story.... yes a quality PSU with very clean power could make a difference for a vid card that was failing at stock speeds, but the other part of the story was that sapphire's low quality VRMs weren't up to the task of cleaning up any dirty power at all and thus were just as guilty (V2 of the 1950pro cards had a completely revamped VRM section and voila... alll of the complaints about cards failing at stock speeds seemed to go away).

So, no guarantees, but the PSU would be the first place I'd look, especially if there doesn't seem to be a systemic problem with that particular batch / model of vid card.

[IRQ Conflict]

Hoo boy do I remember that. Greengecko would almost always parrot those talking points. It's your PSU stupid! Still one of my version 2 X1950 pro's messes up somewhat.

Sorry if I derailed this. Excuse the pun.

[Bond007]

There is no way of knowing it is your psu for sure, unless you swap it, but I would say there is a very good chance that is the culprit.

[Soullessone21]

Originally Posted by HoserEh

So I have had to RMA my new XFX Double D 7970, it was artifacting and tearing at stock speeds, and OC'ing was the pits......memory didn't OC at all even with the GPU underclocked.I got my replacement card......OCing is once again the pits.....Memory oc gives me worse performance in any Bench and the GPU jus spits out driver crashes on anything over 5mhz over stock, and tonight it started tearing.....at stock speeds and 56 Celcuis under load.Either XFX has poopy qc or I got the worst luck in cards.But I thought it could, jus could be my PSU, I have a OCZ modstream pro 700 watt. I know I know, but hardwaresecrets did not see anything major in the filtering, well it did not have the best in 12v filtering, but it was with in specs, plus i got it on sale for 60 bucks.Could my PSU be causing my new VC to act like a big pile of poo?

Where on vancouver island do u live? I know I got some good psu's there that u could test and I'm in campbell river for the next 11 days.

[HoserEh]

Thank you Soullessone21 but I'm more leaning on getting a good corsair unit either way, and if the card is still Fubar I will see if NCIX will let me trade up to another model of 7970.

[hossdaddy]

heres a great psu value,
XFX 750W PRO750W Core Edition Single Rail ATX 12V 62A $79.99 - $15 mir + free game

[HoserEh]

gaming in Firefall my 12v rail varies from 12.049 to 11.875 is that normal? the 3.3 and 5 are solid its only the 12.And thanks Hossdaddy i was looking at that exact PSU.