Sat Jun-19-10 01:49 AM by Renovator

Hmmmm... I'll post this here, it could go a few different places.

My desktop is a 3 year old build, that was discussed at that time. A 2.0 GHz Opteron that had been Overclocked to 2.7 GHz, on a Black Neo4 board with 2 gigs of OC'd OCZ RAM, running Visa Biz on a RAID Zero array.

Up until last week I had retained the originally neato X800XL ATI VidCard.

The Power Supply has been a 450 Watt CoolerMaster. This was before the 80 Plus certified marketing campaign.

During a Black Friday closer to then than now, I invested in a HD2600XT, but never got around to installing it. It may well have been the best compromise for this set of parts, but it was relegated to shelf puppie at other matters held sway.

The new 5000 series ATI cards were calling my name , and that 5770 seemed like a nice compromise of cost and performance and not being at the top of the heap, seemed a good candidate as a final piece to my old Vista based puzzle.

I liked the MSI Hawk version, but the price was back up, and the Diamond version has gotten good reviews, and the timing was right as I had just found a home for the X800XL.

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The card doesn't come with a six pin connector, and is set to handle any number of power connector configurations.

I called Diamond before the install to see if my XL's molex to six pin would suffice. (Those connectors have the 1 X 6 connector but only two wires. )

They weren't as concerned with the wiring, they began the process of my gaining acknowledgement that while the 5770 was an efficient card in the 5000 series, it may not produce video with that power supply.

They were right. While this PS doesn't have an efficiency rating, the ratio of average to peak worked out to about 67%.

I had a new 500 watt Extreme Series Power Supply, rated at 70%, so I unwrapped that and installed. I can usually get video on a clean boot, but it doesn't have enough nutts, to pull it out of Hibernation. So I'm slow booting until the newly ordered 86% 650 watt unit gets here.

And no. I don't know if that will be enough. Under load. And that is the point of this post.

We have discussed the evolution of our machines to this point where CPU, GPU, RAM and Power form an interesting mix.

Be advised it can be much more interesting than you might at first expect.

In my case, the blown boots and resets from a dark screen, put my Neo4 into self-defense mode. It cleared all my overclock settings back to default, since it looked like a hosed overclock attempt to its algorithm.

Please be aware that trying to determine what may be the appropriate amount of power for your particular build, especially if multiple, performing Video Cards and several Hardrives are installed, may not be as some of the conventional wisdom about the net suggests.

It will become more important to understand the relationship of the stated Wattage to Efficiency and how that determines what you can deliver down the specific rail in question.

As always, P=IV.

LurkHere

In response to Reply # 0

Capacitor aging is a killer.

500 divided by the power factor says 700 watts ps should do the trick and not stress things. That takes in the aging of the capacitors also in my book. Anyway the route I finally went with and has given no problems.

None of you cards max out the connectios either power wise as the all seem to use 49 watts as a max.
http://archive.atomicmpc.com.au/forums.asp?s=2&c=7&t=9354

In response to Reply # 1

I think you're right. 700 for my one 5770 and my other gizmos. Crossfire would mean 850 Clean I think.

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That's an older chart, and while the rumors are that the 5770 is efficient so one would think the 4850 stuff would be close... my telecon with Diamond suggests you want at least 75 watts available on the 6 pin.

( I thought these were about 128 watt total cards with the older and bigger doing about 185 watts. )

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Yes, my point is as theirs; you can get into a tough spot with these and may not even realize it.

To wit, if you look over the reviews for my version of this card, the mumbles look to me like power supply troubles that they haven't recognized... because the setup 'worked' with a 8800.

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It may not prove economical, but I'm going to inch my way up.

The range here, takes you out of any regularly 40 or 50 dollar Power Supplies and gets you into the $80 after rebate EcoPower stuff heading to the $150 Corsairs.

I found this: http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=10012278

Discussed here, back when: http://www.virtual-hideout.net/reviews/b-Gears_Tarantula_650w/index.shtml

( Apparently it was a $130 unit at one time. )

(( The hickie is, I'm running out of time on my rebate, and would like to see it run Arkham Asylum before I cut the UPC. And the Asus Copper Core just went on sale for a couple of bucks less. ))

I like the reference design, with the Rev. 2 Cooler, so I'm probably keeping what I have.

LurkHere

In response to Reply # 2
Sat Jun-19-10 10:25 PM by Train

The brand I like.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010090058+50008791&QksAutoSuggestion=&ShowDeactivatedMark=False&Configurator=&Subcategory=58&description=&Ntk=&CFG=&SpeTabStoreType=&srchInDesc=

I will tell you right now, they are heavy. And my 600 took a horrible beating when 2 of those 250,000 Volt transmission lines slapped together and is still working 3 years later.

Each 6 pin drawsw up to 75 watts is right. And think, some cards have 2 of those 6 pins.

In response to Reply # 3

It's good to hear.

I saw them at MicroCenter, BTW.

LurkHere

In response to Reply # 4

It's only been a month but it seems like so much longer.

I've fixed or neutered 4 or 5 issues and still don't have my system solved.

Unverified contention : The 500 Watt Cooler Master Extreme may be enough to run this set-up.

Bankable: Each computer system, including it's use, is unique. The amount of power used at each specific plug determines what works for that system.

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I did order, receive and install the efficient, 650 Watt, Tarantula Power Supply.

My previous problem remains. The machine boots fine, as it did with the 500 Watt Cooler Master Extreme.

It will not resume from Hibernate, with either Power Supply.

This is simply not acceptable. Hibernate is the single greatest feature of Vista or Win7 for my needs. (Well, that and Aero Glass.)

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After way, and I mean way too many attempts at recovery, which naturally resulted in an untold number of hard boots, my memory suddenly remembered that this could be a configuration issue with my new way too good for this aging case and motherboard, HD 5770 video card.

A quick joogle, and I was in mighty fine company. Folks are hoping for a driver fix, and have been for many moons.

I had originally called Diamond on a related PS issue, so renewed that exercize, and he thought it could just be the card, so if I could get it in another similar build, maybe that would point us toward replacement

I was collecting drivers and uninstalling this and that including the Catalyst Control Center, when a number of other torpedos were damned.

It looked all the world like I had roasted a component in the 5 volt side of the motherboard, so time was lost establishing whether another board could be sent from Asia, so I could recover my RAID 0 drives.

( I finally found a loose connection on the 4 pin side of the 20/24 pin main. ) (( It turns out the Tarantula connector(s) line up in a 'special' way. ))

((( And broken plastic hickie that lines up the SATA power on one of my HDD's. )))

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So I'm back on the main work machine. It still sux at Hibernate. I still haven't loaded Batman. ( Shoot, I haven't reloaded CoD on my laptop, either. )

More drivers and ideas are available, and more deadlines have passed.

And I need to get into backup mode. JIC.

LurkHere

In response to Reply # 5
Sun Jul-25-10 10:05 AM by Train

Try Sleep instead.
Sometimes it will work when Hibernate will not.

Run ram testers both Windows Memory Diagnostic and Memtest.

Run into a compatibility problem between two sticks of OCZ a few months back which prevented Hibernate from acting right.
Each stick was fine by themselves. But together

In response to Reply # 6

I think you're going to be right on 2 or 3 of those.

I found a thread at MSKB. It's weird. It usually happens after an OS or Hardware, probably Vid Card change. It can be both nVidia or ATI.

XP, Vista or Seven.

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Yup, I do have dual OCZ Platinum.

And I DID have this think OC'd by 35% and the mem kicked as high and stable as it would go... but the bad starts, killed the overclock settings to chip default... then when I got the Keyboard error, I pulled the battery... so I now I'm as slow as it goes.

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I have just recovered... from some state, on this most recent test.

I installed the most recent ATI drivers, after the prior post. I also finally understood where the 'advanced' power options were.

They seemed to contradict what I thought I was doing. I need to run now and study something else.

IOW's while my Start Power Button said 'Hibernate' and I am running S3 in the BIOS, I may have been in 'Sleep' mode the whole time.

I think I just came out of the real 'Hibernate' which is how my advanced stuff is now set.

At this point there is progress. I still need to boot, but it is a resume, not a reload.

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The part I'm not smart enough to understand, is how can a software or hardware change, show a memory save error. Because if you look at all the cases, that's where this is pointing.

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Ahhhch. Now my button no say 'Hibernate'. It sez ' will save and turn off'. And the sleep button option sez 'low power' state, which is what I had been doing.

I stand corrected. at any time in the past, while discussing Vista, if I said I was hibernating I was sleeping.

And for the record, my Win7 laptop apparently does both from time to time, as it sees fit.

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So, yes at this point Hibernate does work. Sleep needs to be tested.

I think.

LurkHere

In response to Reply # 7

Glad that is figured out.

That could cause a body to go bald.

In response to Reply # 8

I'm going to clarify a missing from the above account, but significant portion of my still puzzle.

The 'state', I have used, up until the new Video Card was installed, had been the S3 Sleep State. Vista and Win7 and most 5 or 6 year old motherboards support it well.

(I, for one reason or another, thought this new better thing was 'hibernate', but it is not.)

Since my troubles with S3, I am NOW using Hibernate.

Essentially, Hibernate suspends to Disk, and S3 Sleep suspends to RAM.

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The missing from above info:

My system actually seems to go to 'Sleep' just fine.

AND the drives and OS and Fans all seem to awaken from 'Sleep' just fine... BUT the monitor does not come back on.

The monitor stays black. The Monitor is blank.

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( I'm wondering if the reason RAM modules play in some of the fixes, is because of the increased size of the video RAM. The HD 5770 is a 1 gig DDR3 card. ) (( How or how much is cached ? ))

LurkHere

In response to Reply # 9

Possible, just never thought of that.

In response to Reply # 10

I really don't want to invest the time on this, but I'm finding more clues:

Waking from 'Hibernate' continues to work just fine. (For two or three days.)

So... I started to put my system back to where it was.

This thing has run with a 35% overclock and clocked RAM for years.

I attempted to reinstate my faster BIOS settings, and while the system seemed to be fine and apparently booted just fine into Windows... I couldn't see it.

Yup. The machine booted through, but the monitor never initialized.

Now in fairness, I haven't been in this BIOS in years, and I may be missing a setting or six, but the PCI-E buss frequency is a separate, discrete. setting, not a ratio.

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Anyhow, I do have my HT ratio down to 3X . I can get the monitor up, by using a 9X multiplier and the FSB at 260.

I'm pretty sure I bought this chip to get the 10X Multi and ran that at 270 Hz.

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There's linkage, I just don't have it figured yet.

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( Maybe after I get these drawings out for the building department. )

LurkHere

In response to Reply # 11

LurkHere

In response to Reply # 12
Wed Jul-28-10 08:35 AM by Train

Interesting indeed!


"Anyhow, I do have my normal, agrresive RAM settings back"

Good to hear!

In response to Reply # 13

I found that RAM tester I heard about that runs wild in Windows, so it can try and grab those intermittent errors.

As I was reading up on it, I started Task Manager... OMG.

I have a widget with both cores and RAM usage at the top of my sidebar and still never saw it.

I'm at a nominal 50% usage at idle. One gig in play with no new apps open.

As I type this, Task Manager shows the 2 gig total Physical RAM with 1354 cached leaving only 18 Mb Free.

Probably not my video card at fault, for the 'suspend to RAM' not waking the monitor.

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Resource Meter is showing hard fauilts in Direct Player Core... why the heck is that running, along with a couple of handfuls of other stuff.

Two Iexplore's and two sidebars... and now 54% Used... and that cached number... weird. Got some cutting and closing to do.

LurkHere

In response to Reply # 14

Ok. The max RAM caching is standard Vista, and the big memory managing advantage over XP. It continues in Seven ( , of course since it's nearly the same OS) .

I think my wall is utilizing over 50% of the physical RAM on a normal basis.

I turned off the Windows Search Service for now, and I did drop the RAM usage to 45% .

The sticker is, I have a widget that shows CPU / RAM use constantly, and I just don't remember the graph this high. I think it was more like high 20's. Maybe low 30's

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There are folks that have had problems getting VM's to initialize, due to low memory. In some of those cases, it's because the coding for the VM doesn't get the difference between cached and allocated.

I'm wondering if that's a similar mess with these Vid Card and OS upgrade issues.

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Anyway, I really like have the snot back, with these better settings. I'll let it run stable and try I'll run an overnight RAM test on each core. I'll give each tester instance a bit over 500 Mb to play with.

LurkHere

In response to Reply # 15

This is the In Windows RAM Tester I've been using: http://hcidesign.com/memtest/

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Last night, I let it go with Ethernet cable pulled and all apps like the AV, shutdown.

I ran two instances and gave each 550 MBs of RAM to run through on.

It reported over 5000% coverage, which I think means it, it did 50 passes, on each core, without error.

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My RAM usage has been around 40% for most of the morning, but now I'm back in the 45% category . Looks like with Windows Search disabled I'm going to be about 900 megs used.

LurkHere

In response to Reply # 16

So... I figured... it's running just fine. I haven't re-attempted 'Sleep-S3', and I haven't ever run Batman Arkham Asylum... which is why I started this, that has devolved to trechery, upgrade.

The distribution of Arkham Asylum I got was for GfWL ( Games for Windows LIVE ) . It was a deal, and it has that system's parameters to deal with. ( My deal is, I try the stuff, before commenting about it. )


( BTW, you can play the game without loading a GfWL profile, you just can't save... or chat... or pull the online content. )

And it loaded and ran just fine. Now I remember why I wanted to try this HD5770. It's very nice, way more than I need for my daily driver. But I'm glad I have it.

The in-game Benchmark ran at an average 57 fps with a high of 60 fps, so it's consistant and quick.

That was at suggested defaults; a 1280 X 768, full widescreen, on my Viewsonic 24".

I wanted to try it at my monitor default of 1920 X 1024, but decicde to take a break and re-invoke the sleep option.

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At this point, I just want to bury my head and cry.

The machine woke from sleep, but the monitor DID NOT.

So, I hit the 'reset' switch, rather than the hard shutdown.

On re-boot... I'm now back to where I was weeks ago:

'KEYBOARD ERROR or KEYBOARD MISSING, HIT F1 to CONTINUE.'

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So I'm at a total loss at this point.

The last one, cleared after all sorts of what I think were useless attempts at BIOS Clearing and whatnot, chicken bone readings, and finally seeing a loose 4 pin connector.

But that connector looks just fine now.

I may do what I was starting to do when I found the bad connection. Replace back to the 500 Watt Extreme, just in case this is a 5v problem with the new 650 Watt supply.

( I have a feeling it's weirder than that. It's happened out of a bad Sleep with a reboot. Not after anyone jiggled anything.)

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Any T-Shoot is in line after a messy fix to my baby Satellite Dish mounting that twisted in the wind. Destroying facia and attendant rafter ends. Loverly.

LurkHere

In response to Reply # 17

The 650 should be cooler than the 500, something to think about anyway.


If possible, trim off the 2 damaged rafters and span the gap with a 4x4 , may get away with 2x4, replace facia. I used screws.
Works like a door header and much stronger.

In response to Reply # 18

Rodger on the span header.

This was a poor satellite install from the beginning. E* must use their installers, and these are the guys doing the 'free' installs.

They ran 60' of line to a water faucet for a ground. A waterline ground in this day and age. Then ran inside and pliered out the groung pin from the new receiver.

The facia looks like swiss cheese from all the attempts. This area is not rotted, just pooched.

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Anyhow, it's time to replace most of the facias, since many ends are rain rotting. It's been 25 years. I just really didn't want to move this project to the front of the line.

I'm still trying to decide if I want Hardie on this one. The facia's are rabbited for the soffit, so that will have to change. And I think that's what I'm going to do. Then it'll be the last time I need to deal with it.

And the Hardie wouldn't work without the backing plate / header.

I'm shooting for 24' today to see how it goes... and hopefully have sat back.

And the Hardie wouldn't work without the backing plate / header.

LurkHere

In response to Reply # 19

Hardie does have its limitation.

Copper pipe makes a good ground as long as you jumper the solder joints.

Run a ohm metter across the joints. Love messing with the code folks.

In response to Reply # 20

The Hardie is here and I'm gonna start lifting it.

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The ground's not the problem, it's those little cathodic holes in the walls and above one's head.

LurkHere

In response to Reply # 21

AH!