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MazzaRC

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XFX 7600GS problems

I have a PC with the following spec:
Acer T135 basic structure with
Gigabyte K8VM800MAE motherboard
2GB RAM in two sticks
AMD Sempron 3000+
2 x SATA 7200RPM drives
1x DVD/CD RW combo drive
Windows XP Home
Latest Nvidia drivers

It did have an old 300Watt LiteOn PSU and FX 5500 graphics card, however have just upgraded to :

Hiper HPU 4M580 PSU
XFX Nvidia 7600GS AGP graphics card.

It doesn't matter what molex plug I use on the graphics card, i still get weird symptoms.

The first time it was fine in Windows, and fine for the first minute of running LOTR Online, then I got artifacts.
The second time it was almost immediate and rebooted spontaneously, having horrid artifacts all over the screen even on the POST screen.
Third time was pretty much immediate as well but no spontaneous reboot.

The severity of symptoms did seem to vary depending on which molex connector, and definitely increases over time, developing noticeable dots and artifacts around the mouse cursor even in a browser window after 5-10 minutes.

Is this graphics card or PSU?
Is there anything I can do to fix it?

When I first got the graphics card I didn't know about power requirements, and got the same kind of symptoms (but far more severe) with the old power supply, so I'm tempted to say graphics card, but don't want to rule anything out.
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jamietoner
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MazzaRC

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PSU has one 18A and one 20A rail and was bought after research. It seems many people are running far more off of this type of PSU with no problems.... but that might just be my luck to get a dud one.
Is the card overclocked at all? It is often the case that a card the has been overclocked too far will produce "interesting" results. Otherwise, I would check your AGP settings (as above) and make sure your system isn't running too hot.
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ASKER

Not overclocked.

GPU is running at 45-70+ C dependent on load.

Machine runs fine with a different graphics card so I can only assume it is dud. I am awaiting an RMA and new graphics card delivery, then we'll find out for sure!

Afterall... artefacts on the POST screen really don't bode well!
Send the card back to be replaced for warranty-replacemenet.
Oh, sorry... failed to notice that you're already waiting RMA :-p
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ASKER

Thanks for the help! It turned out to be the graphics card afterall. A new 7600GT is working just fine :-)