performance degrading

[akadi]

just wanna share with you a very awkward situation i am facing.
first, my current rig is:

intel e6750 @ 2.66
2G corsair dominator 8500 @ 1066 5-5-5-15
xfx 8800 gts 320 mb XXX edition
gigabyte p35-ds3r
WD 500gb 16mb
assus DVD burner
400W power supply
win xp sp2
I also have dominator air flow fans installed on top of the rams, a 12" intake fan, and a 12" exhausts fan

i ve had this rig for about 2 month now. everything running at stock speeds. i ran 3dmark06 when i first built the pc, and i had 10600 points. I then over clocked the cpu to 3.2 and dropped the ram to 970 4-4-4-12 and my benchmark went up to 11400 points.

now the problem i have is the following. I just ran 3dmark and i got 10000 points at stock speeds and 10300 over clocked as above.


how can i loose all these points in just about two month of running?

i tried the following:

i updated the bios to the most recent one.
installed a fresh copy of windows xp on another drive and ran the benchmark..but still got the same downgraded results..

any ideas what might be going on? is it possible for hardware (graphics card or memory) to degrade in performance?

thanks

[PP Mguire]

My best guess is, you probably have filled up your HD with your usual programs by now so you probably have more background processes. Also, with your 400watt PSU, it might be dieing on you. Less voltage means less performance. Which would of course lower your score. Im sorta having the same problem, but making me scratch my head more.

[akadi]

thanks pp for your reply..
inorder to rule out the installed programs build up issue, i installed a fresh copy of win xp on another drive (as i mentioned in my post).
that leaves me with the psu..well its only a couple of month old (the whole system is) so i believe its too early for it to start dying..
anyway thanks again..and hope i can get other ideas as to how to solve this annoying issue..

[timberwolf120]

I noticed that you just mentioned you had a 400W psu.
Could you tell us more about it like the brand, model, and specs?

[akadi]

the make of the PSU is a Japanese brand called HEC. you can see the specs here http://www.hec-group.jp/psu.htm, i am sorry the features are in Japanese, but the output specs are readable in english.

my understanding is that PSU dont have an effect on performance (please correct me if i am wrong here). A PSu will either fire up the pc if it can provide enough voltage, or it wont in case it cant. but once the pc is running, psu wont have any effect on performance. beside its the same psu that gave 10600 points just under a couple of month ago.

i don't mind buying a new psu, but i must be sure first if its whats causing the problem

thanks

[PP Mguire]

If your PSU fails to have enough amps on the 12v rail it can start to undervolt your machine. Meaning that your PSU cant supply enough current to everything in your PC (which is power hungry in your specs) and that will degrade performance after a while, and if gone for to long will burn up your PSU or start taking out components becasue they arent getting enough juice.

Hypotheticaly Speaking
Lets say you work in an office. Your usual routine is to get up to a cup of coffee and drink coffee to keep you going all day while working in the office. Well what if one day you had a Starbucks Double shot to get going and then you had about 1 or 2 cups during your 8 hour shift. Not enough to keep you going right? You start to slow down and get tired. Of course this isnt EXACTLY whats happening but an approximate dummyfied version of whats going on with your PSU. I wouldnt even trust that PSU to run my overclocked machine sadly. You have 29 amps combined to power a monster machine. Its just not cutting it mate.

[Xero (1)ne]

It might be me but 600 point loss doesn't seem like much...

During the two months that you had it, had you upgraded any drivers at all? If you did the fresh install of Windows with these new drivers then I think that they are likely the cause of the drop.

PSU Amperage could be a very likely cause for it too though since a 400W is driving a pretty hefty machine. I reccommend upgrading your PSU regardless of whether or not it's the problem. Which it very well could be.

[Sadasius]

PSU Amperage could be a very likely cause for it too though since a 400W is driving a pretty hefty machine. I reccommend upgrading your PSU regardless of whether or not it's the problem. Which it very well could be.

I second that actually and also how old is this PSU you are using? Because one thing you have to realize with PSU's is that the older they get the less they push out due to capacitor degradation. So if your 400W is a year old for instance it may have already lost about 5-10% of it rating already depending on the brand. So I think this hefty machine has put a serious demand on this poor PSU and it is degrading pretty quick now and causing some things to be under powered which would fully explain your lower scores. If it is your PSU and I am pretty certain it is then you will see lower and lower scores over time until parts start to fail.

[akadi]

It might be me but 600 point loss doesn't seem like much...

During the two months that you had it, had you upgraded any drivers at all? If you did the fresh install of Windows with these new drivers then I think that they are likely the cause of the drop.
.

the 600 points is about is about 6% drop in performance, which i bieleve is not rather insignificant. also whats more alarming is that i used to be able to get a 7.5% performance increase by overclocking (from 10600 to 11400), but now overclocking only yileds 3% increase (from 10000 to 10300)..now thats alarming!

as for the fresh install, i made sure to use the original drivers which i used to built the system (the same ones that gave 10600) in order to make sure i am comparing apples to apples here..

[Sadasius]

Well your overclock may affect your voltage regulators on your motherboard especially if your PSU is crapping out. You will know if you go to touch them and burn your fingers or if the capacitors are bubbled on the top or even leaking. Like I said, parts will start to fail and by the looks of things I am placing my bet on the motherboard first.

[akadi]

I second that actually and also how old is this PSU you are using? ........................................... If it is your PSU and I am pretty certain it is then you will see lower and lower scores over time until parts start to fail.


the whole system including the psu is just about 2 month old...it was the psu that came with the case...but now after i read some of the replies here, i purchased a new psu from amazon. its the corsair HX 520 watt, which delivers about 40 amps on the 12v rails..hope it will enough, and hope it will solve this issue! i will post the results once i get it..

[akadi]

Well your overclock may affect your voltage regulators on your motherboard especially if your PSU is crapping out. You will know if you go to touch them and burn your fingers or if the capacitors are bubbled on the top or even leaking. Like I said, parts will start to fail and by the looks of things I am placing my bet on the motherboard first.


i never ran the system oveclocked.. i only OCed just for testing when i first built the system, but since then i ran everything at stock speeds..
you got me worried here, but thank god capacitors are quite cool to the touch now, i just felt them!

[Sadasius]

i never ran the system oveclocked.. i only OCed just for testing when i first built the system, but since then i ran everything at stock speeds..
you got me worried here, but thank god capacitors are quite cool to the touch now, i just felt them!

Most PSU's that come with cases are the cheapest junk parts on the market. If you paid about $80 for a case and it comes with a PSU, just do yourself a massive favor and save headaches by throwing it out. Always go with a good quality PSU when building a quality high performance system. I would not OC it anymore that is for sure. Be patient and wait for your new one to come in and then see the difference.

[akadi]

do you think that the 520w will be good enough or should i have went for a 620w or something?

[Sadasius]

do you think that the 520w will be good enough or should i have went for a 650w or something?

Corsair is a good brand and it should hold up rather well I am sure. If you are just running the one video card then yeah you should be fine and I am more than certain you will be able to OC without too much trouble as well. You will notice your scores go back up again.

[akadi]

great!..thanks.. i ll keep you posted

[PP Mguire]

Yea like he and i said its most likely your PSU thats dropping voltagtes. When OCing it takes even more juice to push your parts. A 520watt is cutting it but with that much amps on the 12v rail it should be fine. IM pushing my highly OCed machine on my Ultra.

[Sadasius]

The one thing you have to realize as well is that you may have already done permanent damage to your voltage regulators on your motherboard. When you run a PSU to its limit its ability to smooth out voltages disappears and in some cases becomes an amplifier. So which means your motherboard may have been bombarded for the past couple of months with severe electrical noise that may have done some permanent damage. That's why when some people who realize their problem too late and change PSU's they end up blowing something because the electrolyte efficiency in the capacitors were diminished from all the electrical noise from the previous PSU and just goes 'POP'. Sometimes this can have a cascading effect and blow something else with it like RAM, CPU or Video Card. I know because I have done it myself and made plenty of smoke shows in my time. When planning on making a rig especially a high performance one, always plan to the end and try to think of everything possible before turning on the power switch. If no permanent damage was done then yeah you will notice an improvement.

[akadi]

are you saying that if the cause of the performance degrade that i am facing now turned out to be indeed due to the PSU weakness, then it means that some of the capacitors are already permanently damaged? and that this would result in them popping up once i change the PSU, and consequently this might blow the RAM or CPU?

well that sounds very serious. because now when i install the new PCU i will stand a a very big chance of ruining the system totally.

thanks alot for the insight..

[akadi]

If no permanent damage was done then yeah you will notice an improvement.

and if permanent damage was done then the system will fall apart...

are these the only two options i have now?

[Frag Maniac]

The new 8800GTS 320MB Fatal1ty draws 445W at load. It's more than just OCed though, but gives you an idea of power requirements. If you're OCing yours at all a 400W PS isn't much.
http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1166&pageID=3950 (http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1166&pageID=3950)

[Ranzear]

Minor correction to that, thats 445w drawn by the whole system, which the 8800 is a major portion of.

400w is far too weak for all the fans and such you say you're running, the system itself even.

[Sadasius]

and if permanent damage was done then the system will fall apart...

are these the only two options i have now?

If permanent damage was done it could fall apart. It is why when you build a rig to make sure not to underpower it. I have blown CPU's, RAM and Video Cards and not to mention the ocasional PSU and almost all of this was due to bad PSU's thinking it will hold until I get the new PSU. I never realized the damage I was doing. It was fully explained to me by my brother who is an expert in this area. He is a micro computer engineer and works for Adobe. So now I always buy a quality brand PSU or I don't even turn the switch on until I do. I have a bunch of expensive paper weights here from my learned lesson's.

[PP Mguire]

Yea me to actualy. FX-53 system from back in the day was blown due to a Raidmax 430watt and i had to drop to a Socket A again. Never doing that ever again.

[akadi]

just an update..

i got the new PSU..up and running

no i didn't get any capacitors pop ups. no i didnt get any cpu/memory failures. and no i didn't get any increase in 3dmark score. still hovering around 9900-10000 pts..

150$ for nothing

[Sadasius]

just an update..

i got the new PSU..up and running

no i didn't get any capacitors pop ups. no i didnt get any cpu/memory failures. and no i didn't get any increase in 3dmark score. still hovering around 9900-10000 pts..

150$ for nothing

You did not spend that money for nothing. You did need it. What power supply did you get?

[akadi]

i got a corsair hx 520w, which delivers 40amps on the 12v rail.

the minumium required by nvideia for my GPU is 400w (26amps) based on quad processors. thats why i thought that my old psu would be enough. Ok, maybe i didnt spend the money for nothing , the new psu is a good one anyway. but at least i haven't resolved the main issue yet, which is why i went down from 10600pts to 9900 now..

[Xero (1)ne]

I have two friends who always think that the power supply that came with their case will be enough but it's more about stability more than anything. I warn them but they don't listen...I just hope that when their power supplies go that it doesn't take any of their hardware with it...

[akadi]

well i never had any stability issue what so ever with my old psu. the system was rock solid for 2 month straight. dosnt matter now. i have a new psu, but still i cant get to the reason why the performance has degraded!

[Sadasius]

well i never had any stability issue what so ever with my old psu. the system was rock solid for 2 month straight. dosnt matter now. i have a new psu, but still i cant get to the reason why the performance has degraded!

Every time you do a bench it degrades? Every time? Because I notice fluctuations for my benches all the time. Sometimes it is higher and sometimes it is lower depending on what apps are loaded and taking speed from the benches. You did a very smart thing to buy that PSU, Corsair is not a bad make and they make them look good as well. Also try rebooting your system every time you do a bench so it is fresh and ready to fly.

[akadi]

offcourse the results fluctuate every time. Its very rare if you get the same exact number twice. But what i am looking at here is at a score the hovers between 9900-10000, but never more. Nothing even close to the 10600 @ stock and 11400 OCed I started out with.

I surely restart win before any benchmark i do.

I am almost sure now that this degrade is due to a hardware failure of some sort. I reckon its either the GPU or the memory. Either one of them stopped performing as it was when it was new

[Sadasius]

I remember ruining a couple sticks of ram when I made a noob OC mistake. I doubled the speed in the bios forgetting that DDR is supposed to be set at half. They still worked but not the same as when I first got them. But for your problem it has me scratching my head as well.

[PP Mguire]

I am almost sure now that this degrade is due to a hardware failure of some sort. I reckon its either the GPU or the memory. Either one of them stopped performing as it was when it was newIm still saying degrading from low voltages under full load from your old psu. Since you have a new PSU if you can RMA anyting id do it.

[akadi]

if you can RMA anyting id do it.

all the components are still under warranty. but the thing is they are all fully functional w/o any problem. how can i justify and rma request? i don't think its possible!

[Acidtears33]

Drivers are my main culprit. Look at the radeon 7.9 drivers. I think they lowered performance of the cards across the board.

If you have not changed out drivers than I would be less than concerned.

Don't forget you're talking about a synthetic application here. If you see a "noticeable" drop in frames in a real game then I would get worried.