How can I get enough power to Voodoo 4

[straitway]

I have a 300 watt power supply on my system the computer locks up at the begining of games. they told me to contact the people who built my computer for this prolbem, well I am the one who built it, Can any one help me fix this? It seems like 300watts is enough huh?

[bassvax]

Hi Ya Strait! Unless you've tanked a lot of peripheral cards into that system along with dual processors (or maybe an AMD system) I don't see where 300 watts wouldn't be enough. We'll need quite a bit more info on your system (full components) to really advise with confidence. I too, run the Voodoo 4-4500 (PCI), but I don't have a bunch of other cards installed. The installation of video and sound cards (and sometimes modems) are the major headaches of building and upgrading. If your video card is of PCI nature I would suggest moving it to another slot and re-installing. A common suggestion is to start with a bare bones system and install one peripheral at a time. You'll notice in the instructions for the installation of the video card that you will have to change your monitor/video adapter to standard display then shutdown and so on...What games are locking on the system? The 32MB on that video card should handle just about any standard game. Have you checked for updated drivers for the card? www.3dfx.com (http://www.3dfx.com) My son runs c++ and has designed several 3D models on a pc chips mobo, 500MHz Celeron, 128MB RAM. There may need to be some tweaking of settings to get it where you want it.

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Jerry

[straitway]

Hey, I have just about given up! I mean i have spent at least 15 hours a day on this new system i am building. I got so frustrated witht he Voodoo 4 card I took it back. I live way out in the country. so drive to the local computer store is not across the street. its 2 and a half hours away. So i Picked up a 3D Blaster Annihilator 2. and guess what my Prolbem has gotten worst. Now the computer freezes up at any time and will not even down load a game, ie Madden 2001 and Delta Force land warrior.

For what its worth I have a AMD Athlon 1000mz, 393 megs of memory, SB Live Platium 5.1, 40HHD with a ATA card to read 100 instead of 66 on the hard drive. Acer DVD 16X40, HP 8x4x32 CDRW. Thanks for any help.

[Paleo Pete]

First check into your BIOS settings, especially the AGP Aperture and memory timing. PC Guide BIOS Settings (http://www.pcguide.com/ref/mbsys/bios/set/index.htm) and BIOS Survival Guide (http://www.manawatu.gen.nz/pages/bios_survival/bios_sg.htm) and Definitive BIOS Optimization Guide (http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/Speed_Demonz/BIOS_Guide/BIOS_Guide_Index.htm) might give you some pointers on what to look for that might affect performance that seriously.

Next, maybe try installing a newer version of DirectX.

Also shut down everything possible that's running in the background, something might be trying to grab resources already alotted to something else. Check for sufficient drive space for a good sized swap file. With 393MB memory I would keep close to a gig of free space for a swap file. Yeah I know, with that much RAM it shouldn't need a swap file at all, but the more memory you give Windows the more it wants...

If all else fails, bassvax made a very good observation. Start with a bare bones system and add one thing at a time. That includes software, and try everything you install for a day or two before installing anything else. Install virus scanner last, to avoid having to disable it every time you install a program. If you forget to disable it you end up with problems very similar to what you have now.

I hate to say it, but you might need to start over from scratch, with nothing but motherboard, CPU, RAM and floppy, and go from there one step at a time. It sounds a lot to me like you put everything in all at once and now it's a major problem to figure out what is causing the problem, which could very easily be a combination of several minor glitches piling up on top of each other into one major disaster.

If you have to do that, remove everything in Safe Mode first, hard drives, CD ROM, video, sound, all of it. Leave nothing but floppy and start from there, onre thing at a time. In a worst case scenario you might even have to format the drive and reinstall everything to find out if it's a particular program causing trouble on top of hardware problems. If so, try everything out for a day or so to make sure it runs right before adding any more software.

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[straitway]

Thanks for all the help guys, The Problem is Heat, to the computer CPU is getting to hot, so installed to fans and so far it's been running good. Thanks for all the Help.

[bassvax]

You readin' minds now?...after a day of thought and a close to similar prob with my son's pc and Final Fantasy VIII (FMV only). Heat was lurking as the next suspect in line (although I don't think heat is his real prob I suspect the weak-kneed Celery). Good catch-Let us know if you can game like a freak now. Can you really imagine the heat generated by that gig monster http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif
ps-So here, too I must contradict myself in thinking that Celeron was good enough for gaming as I had stated in the earlier post...I see a PIII on the horizon

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Jerry

[This message has been edited by bassvax (edited 12-25-2000).]

[Paleo Pete]

I feel like an idiot...been following this one for several days, and heat never entered my hairless cranium...

CRS strikes again http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

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My hairdresser charges me a finder's fee!!

Please post your questions on the forums, not in my email.

Computer Information Links (http://www.geocities.com/paleopete/)

[straitway]

Thanks everybody. I did get everything worked out, first i changed my Voodoo 4 AGP card to a 3D Blaster Annihilator. and it works fine. I installed two fans in my case because I found out it was getting hot and now it is working fine. thanks for all the Help. By the way I did install everything at once but i will never do it again.