Sharam,

Things didn't quite go exactly as planned, but in the end have turned out very well. Newegg wouldn't let me trade up, just replaced the thermaltake psu. I happened to be out shopping on 'black friday' today here and wandered into circuit city. They had, sitting right there in front of me, an Antec 480W TruePower 2.0 power supply, with a 50$ rebate! It ended up costing me 50 bucks, I just installed it, and the computer booted up quicker than it ever did with the Thermaltake!! I could not BELIEVE (yes, I'm shouting because I'm p.o.ed that I didn't buy an Antec sooner) how much faster it booted up. I also picked up an IDE ATA 250 GB hard drive for sixty bucks. I'm going to give Madden '05 a run now and see how things are looking. The fan runs a lot quieter too, I guess because it's larger. Yay!! :bounce:

Thanks so much for sticking it out with me and taking the time to explain stuff. Now I truly understand the importance of an underpowered system. Now, got any suggestions for a good external hard drive to back up stuff??

Now you need to change your sig and specs again for the new PS, lol.

Sharam, I now consider you the go-to guy for PS questions, lol. Good reading here, don't have anything to comment on though.

*thinks to himself, I'm going to go count up my own parts and PS specs...*

Problems....

Sharam,

how do you read minidumps? I installed my PSU, and everything has gone well. However, my system started to spont. reboot again. I sent a couple of minidumps on a thread and someone gave me an idea that its either my video memory or my system memory. How do you tell??

I have never used minidumps, someone else should help you with that! It is just that I have never needed to look for one up to this day. Found lot of info on them just using Google.

Good turn around on the power supply.

Re boots could point to faulty RAM, just check any memtest. At the same time try under clocking your processor (if it is set to 200MHz lower to 133MHz or even 100MHz just to see how things run making sure your RAM follows your FSB).

Is the BIOS on your 9800 the original? Are you using RAM sink or have you done any modifications?

Can you give me your 9800's part number from the PCB if possible?

Since you haven't replied, should I assume you have already fixed this? I hope so

What I did was take the two older RAM sticks out and have left them out. I was just talking to a friend of mine today at the gym who suggested putting the RAM sticks back in and underclock it, the same as you have suggested. I think the P4C800 Deluxe can handle a 400 MHZ FSB for memory, but maybe it drops a bit when all four DIMM slots are occupied. Since those RAM sticks have been taken out (and uninstalling ZoneAlarm Pro), the errors and problems seem to have stopped. I just was playing Far Cry at 1024x768 with the graphics ramped up and it didn't hiccup even once. Madden 05 plays without any lag. I think that when I have some time I'll pull out the tower and put them back in while lowering the RAM bus a notch or two on the BIOS. My BIOS is updated, as well as the Catalyst drivers.

My monitor is ancient (it's an old MAG CRT monitor, I have delayed getting an LCD monitor due to ghosting issues that I know once existed and due to the fact that my three year old would probably push it over). Can a monitor affect the quality of the card?

AS far as the BIOS on the 9800, it's the original as best I can tell you. I have never tried to update the BIOS on it, I didn't even know you could. All seems to be going well though. My next system will be an Athlon XP/nVidia rig.

It is true with some motherboards and /or chipsets in regards to filling up all sockets with DDR400! If your modules are compatible, all you need to do is, remove one module to find out.

A monitor can affect your card’s performance only with response time, refresh rate and such, but it should not give you stability problems.

I have a 9700 non pro that I have flashed with a 9700Pro BIOS. Not suggesting you to follow, just to answer your question. You have to know which card you can push.

Here is an example techPowerUp! ATI Bios Collection if you click on advance, you get to edit your BIOS.

Well, it seems like things are OK!

You never did tell us if there are any visual differences with the Dual 12V rail power supplies

I can't tell much with the visual differences, in part because I think my monitor is about six years old. It's an old MAG CRT monitor, but the system has definitely been running more stable. This new power supply is much quieter too. My wife used to hate the old one because it sounded like a helicopter taking off.

My CPU temp is running about 35 C at idle and hits 50 C when playing games, it's never gone above 50 C according to my ASUS probe that I run in the background.

I went to the website that you suggested and found another program called ATITool. I bumped up the core speed and memory a bit, tested it out for stability, and then ran 3DMark03. my score went from 5900 to over 6300. I'm afraid to flash the BIOS on the card because I'm scared that it'll go kaput. What is the advantage of flashing to a more recent BIOS vs. just using ATITool? I like being able to set it back to the default speeds with the touch of a button.

I really think the issue was my RAM occupying all those slots. A shame, since now I have 100 bucks of RAM just sitting around. If I continue to accumulate parts, I could build another whole system! I haven't put it back in because work has been crazy.

So far so good, thanks for asking!

I was talking about the power supply (visual differences, dual12V and single 12V rail), I am assuming there are no distinctive differences or you would have already said something.

In the ATI Tool you can create a profile with your stock speed and click on load or assign a hot key to it.

I just provided the link so you know it is possible to flash or update firmware on practically any component that has one and is flashable. (since you said you didn't know, sometimes they do provide updates but here we are talking about turning a 9700 to a 9700Pro or a 9800Pro to a 9800XT, there is a difference)

I turned my 9700 non pro to a 9700Pro by using a BIOS for 9700Pro, You already have the 9800Pro, if you have the 256MB DDRII type, you could turn it in to a 9800XT (it already is an XT but with some features turned off.)
Here is a quick read if you have time, I just searched for it and don’t know anything about the site, proceed with caution!

http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?location=3&var1=92&var2=0