[phillpower2]

reviewers have reported running the card just fine with a 350W PSU.

Sorry but you should totally disregard such statements as they are reckless
The PSU recommendations that manufacturers make are the Minimum that you should have, if the new card fails because you have used an underpowered PSU the merchant is not obliged to replace it because you have voided the warranty.

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I would agree with you, and that's why I double-checked with the technicians at Micro Center before purchasing the card. They said the card would run just fine, and the only time I might have any trouble with it is when running it under maximum load, in which case the computer might power itself down. I told them I'll just be doing some light gaming and watching HD video, so I shouldn't have any problems. Though they didn't mention anything about voiding the warranty. Also, it may be worth noting that AMD uses the term "recommended" and not "required" when listing their specifications. Out of curiosity, how would AMD even know what power supply I'm using?

Edited by Sode no Shirayuki, 19 March 2014 - 08:14 AM.

[Sode no Shirayuki]

I would agree with you, and that's why I double-checked with the technicians at Micro Center before purchasing the card. They said the card would run just fine, and the only time I might have any trouble with it is when running it under maximum load, in which case the computer might power itself down. I told them I'll just be doing some light gaming and watching HD video, so I shouldn't have any problems. Though they didn't mention anything about voiding the warranty. Also, it may be worth noting that AMD uses the term "recommended" and not "required" when listing their specifications. Out of curiosity, how would AMD even know what power supply I'm using?

Edited by Sode no Shirayuki, 19 March 2014 - 08:14 AM.

[phillpower2]

If you check the list of PSUs recommended by AMD here you will note that they do not recommend the use of any PSU lower than 450W for any of their cards, which is odd

As for how would they know that the use of an underpowered PSU had caused the card to fail, the same way that they know when a CPU that has been RMAd as DOA has failed because it has been overclocked too far or used with a third party CPU cooler.

[Sode no Shirayuki]

It is odd that the lowest wattage PSU they list is 450W but then recommend a 400W PSU for the Radeon 6450 in its specifications. It looks like AMD needs to fix some inconsistencies with their recommendations and be less ambiguous. I went to XFX's website. They say a minimum of a 400W PSU is required and recommend a 450W PSU for the Radeon 6450. Though I'm still not sure whether this affects the warranty.

Anyway, people have run the card successfully with 350W PSUs, and the technicians at Micro Center said the card will run just fine with a 375W PSU. The technicians said I wouldn't experience any issues unless I put the GPU under maximum load, in which case the computer might power itself down. According to them, I'll be fine doing light gaming and watching HD videos. I can't say I'm overly concerned about the warranty. It's $35 after rebate. It isn't terribly expensive, and I don't expect to be using it for very long because I need to get a new computer. If the GPU failed in the middle of school, I suspect I wouldn't be able to take advantage of the warranty anyway. It would likely take too long. I'd have to just go out and get a new GPU. So, I can't say I'm overly concerned about the warranty. What do you think?

---

Is there a way I can monitor the number of watts the GPU is using when idle and when watching HD video? Is there a way to monitor the number of watts my whole system is using, too?

Edited by Sode no Shirayuki, 19 March 2014 - 12:31 PM.

[phillpower2]

I for my part have raised the issue of the underpowered PSU and you have acknowledged it so it is your call

Warranties btw are like insurance policies, full of small print and get out clauses.

You can keep a check on temps and voltages etc with HWMonitor and/or Speedfan

[Sode no Shirayuki]

I guess I'll hook it up and see what it does while running idle. I'm eager to see if the new graphics card solves my issue. Plus, I'd hate to go back out to Micro Center if I don't actually have to. What should I be looking for when monitoring temperature and voltages? At what point should I be concerned?

Also, is there a way to monitor wattage that is being used by the GPU alone and by the entire system, too?

[phillpower2]

You will know if you are getting high temps/voltages or in the case of the voltages being low, you will get the same issue as you are presently having, the computer will overheat and shut down or the computer will not boot up at all.

I had a look at your voltages in Speccy but let`s take a closer look with Speedfan and HWMonitor, see below;

Download Speedfan and install it. Once it's installed, run the program and post here the information it shows.
The information I want you to post is the stuff that is circled in the example picture I have attached.
If you are running on a vista machine, please go to where you installed the program and run the program as administrator.


(this is a screenshot from a vista machine)

To capture and post a screenshot;
Click on the ALT key + PRT SCR key..its on the top row..right hand side..now click on start...all programs...accessories...paint....left click in the white area ...press CTRL + V...click on file...click on save...save it to your desktop...name it something related to the screen your capturing... BE SURE TO SAVE IT AS A .JPG ...otherwise it may be to big to upload... then after typing in any response you have... click on browse...desktop...find the screenshot..select it and click on the upload button...then on the lower left...after it says upload successful...click on add reply like you normally would.

Depending on the results we may need to run further software for comparison http://www.cpuid.com.../hwmonitor.html

Screenshot instructions are provided to assist those that may read this topic but are not yet aware of the “how to”.

I know of no software that monitors the wattage of an individual item of hardware that is being supplied by the PSU, there are items that you can purchase to monitor what the whole computer is drawing but they are on the wall socket side of the PSU, an example here

[Sode no Shirayuki]

I actually already took some screenshots of my temperatures yesterday. I took them so I could compare them with the temperatures for the new video card. Load was tested with a 720p Youtube video, 720p video in Potplayer/MPC - HC(WinXP/Win8)(Fullscreen in both cases) , Firefox/Cyberfox (WinXP/Win8), and a game client all running at the same time. Neither HWMonitor and Speedfan are displaying voltages on Windows XP and Windows 8. Speedfan also isn't reporting fan speeds. The temperatures for the nVidia 7300 LE GPU are as follows.

Windows XP - Idle



Windows XP - Load



Windows 8 -Idle



Windows 8 - Load



Windows 8 - Speedfan - This is what Speedfan is displaying on Windows 8. The sections for fan RPM and voltages are blank. This screenshot was taken while the PC was idle.



I hope this is what you're looking for. Also, I'm not experiencing any issues at the moment except for those colored lines we've been talking about and a bad mouse, which is likely going to need to be replaced soon.

Edited by Sode no Shirayuki, 20 March 2014 - 08:57 PM.

[phillpower2]

Thanks for the comprehensive update

Everything looks fine temperature wise

You can check your idle voltages in the BIOS if you wish but keep in mind that they will change when the computer is under load.

I know that the card you plan on using is an XFX but many people use MSI Afterburner to keep a check on their cards as it does work with other brands (not all features of the software will though) MSI Afterburner details here

[Sode no Shirayuki]

I never would've guessed my temperatures were okay when my graphics card is running at 160 degrees Fahrenheit. That seems like a lot to me. Anyway, I put in the new graphics card, the Radeon 6450.

The driver for the card won't even install on Windows XP. I get the following message.



On Windows 8, the driver seems to have installed since I am able to run at my monitor's native 1600x900 resolution. However, something did fail during the installation process. I have no idea what failed because the installer didn't allow me to view the log file. When I clicked 'view log,' nothing happened. I'm going to try reinstalling the drive later. Right now, I want to see how well the graphics card works with the Kawaii Codec Pack.

Edited by Sode no Shirayuki, 21 March 2014 - 03:22 PM.

[phillpower2]

Reported temps for the 7300 Le can be read at the Google page here

How is the new card.

[Sode no Shirayuki]

Sorry about the late reply. I was catching up on some anime. I wanted to take the opportunity to try out the different Kawaii Codec Pack profiles to see what settings work well with the new graphics card. It seems I can use the "high" profile setting when watching 720p video. Very little frames are dropped, and the video plays smoothly.

 

These are the temperatures for the new graphics card. The temperatures reach about 110-115 degrees Fahrenheit when stressed, so it's much cooler than the old graphics card, which reached as high as 170 degrees Fahrenheit.

 

 

Despite several attempts, I am still unable to install the graphics driver for the new card on Windows XP, although I suppose this doesn't really matter anymore because the new card allows me to finally use Windows 8.1. Regardless, this is the error message I get during the installation process.

 

 

I reinstalled the driver and software for the new graphics card on Windows 8.1. I did this because I got an error message during the first installation, which made me feel uneasy, despite everything seemingly working okay afterwards and because the driver occassionally crashed. The installation process was completely successful this time around. There were no errors. However, the driver seems to crash more often now. I am unsure what triggers the driver to crash, and the driver has yet to crash when watching a video. This is the error message I get.

 

 

Nothing seems to happen to the screen when the driver crashes; I just get this message in the try. Before I reinstalled the driver, I ran AMD's cleanup utility.

Edited by Sode no Shirayuki, 28 March 2014 - 09:35 PM.

[phillpower2]

Support for XP is ending next month and so it is unlikely that any WHQL tested drivers will be released for the card, some WHQL information here

 

For the new card you should check the card manufacturer's website for any newer drivers, if that does not resolve the issue try rolling back the drivers to an earlier version and finally if still no joy run the AMD Driver Auto Detect tool which is available from here

 

It is also worth mentioning that such issues can happen when a device is significantly faster than any other item/s of hardware, this is seldom the CPU that is the cause and more often than not it is slower Ram.

 

You should also check that you have the most appropriate version of DirectX installed, see here

[Sode no Shirayuki]

I have the latest version of the driver installed. I downloaded it from AMD's website. I assume I have the latest version of DirectX. dxdiag only shows DirectX11; it doesn't have a decimal after it. But Microsft says that DirectX 11.2 is shipped with Windows 8.1, which I have. Windows Update also isn't reporting any available updates.

 

I don't suspect it has anything to do with the speed of the devices. I had a Radeon 7850 in here a while ago at one point and its driver didn't crash. Thus far, I think the driver has only crashed when clicking on a specific extension's icon in Firefox's toolbar. It crashed occassionally before that for other reasons, but the driver has only crashed when accessing a specific extension's icon after reinstalling the driver. Since my post, I haven't seen the driver crash again. If it happens again, I do have the latest beta of the driver downloaded. Perhaps I can try that.

Edited by Sode no Shirayuki, 29 March 2014 - 08:14 PM.

[phillpower2]

I had the same problem with my Sony Vaio notebook with both Windows 8 and 8.1, not sure how the issue was resolved but it was possibly a Windows update, the notebook has Intel graphics btw.