hi all,
before i begin i am a bit rubbish at computers so firing all sorts of computer wiz questions will just confuse me even more, but i would really appreciate your help. recently i have found that my computer has struggeled to run many new games because of my graphics card (ATI radeon 9200) in my 3 year old computer, and the final straw came when i bought a game that required pixel shader 2+, something which my graphics card simply couldn't handle. so i thought i would update my graphics card to generally improve the performance of my computer, and also get some more RAM (512mb) to give me 1gb of RAM.
so i popped along to my local PC world where i spoke to a very helpful man who provided me with RAM which was compatible with my computer, and recommended the GeForce 6600 256mb AGP 8X as a good graphics card which was compatible with my computer, so i then went and bought this on amazon for £80. it arrived today and i went to fit it. the RAM was easy to fit, and initially so was the graphics card, slotting into its slot nicely, but then the instructions said that it required extra power. after about 30 mins of careful inspection in my computer i couldn't find anywhere to plug the wires from the graphics card to give it extra power, so i phoned PC world who said i should run the cable from the graphics card then to the power cable going to the HDD, then back into the HDD, and so i did that and everything fitted fine. However, when i started my computer up it was running so slowly i couldn't believe it, so i tried updating the drivers, and nothing changed, then i took my computer apart again, removed the graphics card, and now its working fine again.
so i consulted the instructions again and i noticed that they said, and i qoute "never combine the pwoerline from your HDD with your VGA card". this means that either my computer does not have enough pwoer to run this card, and if so what can i do about it?, or that the instruction or the man from PC world are lying. Is there anything i can do to make it work, or have i just thrown away £80?, any help you can provide would be much appreciated.

my computer specs are as follows;
I XTREME 6080
palornar springdale PE(MS6763 ver1.0) motherboard
intel pentium 2.6 GHZ processor
HDD seagate U9 series (80GB i think)
1 DVD drive
1 CD drive
1 floppy disk drive
i already had 512mb or RAM in two sticks, and put in another 512mb of RAM, which seems to be working fine
the power thingy i believe says AC input 220-230 V, if that makes any sense, and when i opened it up i think it said max output 280W

many thanks
Mike.

The wattage is the important thing on the psu (power supply unit).
Adding more ram and a new graphics card will use more power.
Yours being 280w is a bit on the low side, most people recommend 350w and upwards for a system like yours.

So there are 2 things you need to do.
1 - Look into buying a better psu.
2 - Make sure that all the drivers and applications for your old card are uninstalled before installing the new one.

If you should require any more help, then i will do what i can.

P.S. Personally i wouldnt trust advice from pc world, their staff know just the basics at best in most cases. As an example, i was looking for a new pc case, i was standing by them, asked a staff member about prices for pc cases and he replied " i dont think we do them".

thanks for the tip.
but i have another question, i believe my computer moniter also gets power from it at the back, in other words there are two plugs going in the back of my PSU, one fat one if u see what i mean, and one below it a small little one, which i think is my moniter power cable. bearing that in mind, what PSU would you recommend?, and bear in mind i have already spent £120 on more memory and the graphics card, so preferably not something which costs about £200.

sorry to be a pain

Mike.

Well £200 would probably buy a gold plated psu hehe.
But seriously, first off, the power output (that your monitor is connected to) should not have anything larger than a 17inch monitor plugged into it because of power consumption.
I payed £25 for an eye-t 450w psu a while ago, a friend also got an identical one.
We are both running amd64 bit systems without a problem.
I did run my system on a 300w for a while, while it worked fine, ii was a little concerned about how warm it got.
Also, i prefer to power my monitor from a mains socket rather than from the back of a psu. Its one less thing to worry about.

your reply implies that i have a choice about where i power my moniter from, due to the length of time which has passed since i originally got the computer i can't remember whether or not i got another cable to power my moniter with from the mains, but i don't think i did, should i have, and is it possible to do anything about this? and also you mentioned an eye-t 450w psu, would this be compatible with my computer, in so much as does it have an extra plug for my moniter power cable?


Mike.

The eye-t psu doesn't have the mains output on the back of it. A vast majority of the better quality psu's don't either.

so are the cables to power the moniter to the mains common place then?

Yup, their nickname is "kettle lead" because older electric kettles used the same lead.

so they wouldn't be that expensive then, i should (hopefully) be able to get it workign for about £30-£40 (fingers crossed)

Easily, my psu was as i said £25 and i believe a "kettle" lead should be about the £2 mark.

I will just add, its very important to ensure that the driver and applications for your old graphics card are removed, many problems are caused by people not doing this. Especially as you have gone from an ati to an nvidia.

could that be the only reason why my computer runs like a donkey then?

Its a possibility, the 2 most common causes of problems like yours is psu and old drivers. If you search this forum you will find many posts about similar problems.
You will also see from my post count that I've seen plenty of them too.

I personally think that the most complete method for sorting the driver out is to first uninstall your new cards drivers and applications. Shut the pc down and refit the old one, then remove the drivers and applications of it while its in, then shut down again, fit the new card then install its drivers and applications.
It sounds a bit long winded but it works well.

Also go here http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculator.jsp and calculate power consumption for both your old gfx and ram setup and your new one. Then post the results here.

what run this on the computer with my new graphics card in?

It only works with the information you give it, it doesn't check the specs of your pc itself. So it doesn't matter which card is in at the mo.

i don't know enough about computers to fill this in properly

Yeah I agree get a new PSU. I just bought an ASUS N6600 256MB AGP 8X...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814121196 and I am waiting for my new PSU to arrive. If you are buying a PSU look into Antec power supplies. Here is a link to the PSU I just ordered.....
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817103937
And here is a link to the other one I was looking at................
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817103928

Other thoughts....have you adjusted any settings in your BIOS?? Look at my old post for more details....
http://www.techspot.com/vb/showthread.php?t=49371
If you need help in BIOS just ask....it is quite simple to do

right, i bought a 450w PSU from PC world today for £44.99, and it had enough connectors so that i didn't have to connect the graphics card to the HHD and i managed (after a little work) to put it in! however, when i started up it had no effect. after a few hours of proggressively worsening langauge, i went to the packard bell website put in the serial number for my computer and found that there was a BIOS update for my computer, i downaloaded it and made a CD with it, restarted my comp and used the prgram it had made on the CD, and hey presto now my computer runs games beautifully!!!!!!!

i cannot thank you guys enough for the help, as i didn't really know what to do until u guys told me, and now i can enjoy my games fully, and have a strange blue light which comes out of the back of my comp due to the new PSU, which looks pretty smart, so thanks guys, i owe u one.

Mike.

Glad you got it sorted. Just out of interest, what psu did you get in the end?

well due to lack of products in pc world, i had a choice between 2, and the one i got was this one

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/st...null&sm=null&tm=null&sku=234351&category_oid=

once again thanks for the help mate.

Mike.

Had a look and you have got a good psu for a good price

It shouldn't give you any problems.