Video Card Problems?

[Lexic]

Well, for Xmas, My wife lets me buy some stuff off newegg. I wanted to upgrade the PC I already have so I bought Rather cheap or Low End Parts. I bought this computer maybe 4 years ago. Its just a Emachine. Anyways...I bought MSI R4550 1gig GDDR3 Video Card, 2 Gigs of SDDDR Ram (The Older Stuff), and a 350 PSU At first.

I did this after my video old video card stopped working. It was a old 128mb card, so It needed replaced.

The Problems:
After installing the ram, video card, and PSU, When playing all 3D games, I will get either a stopped responding error, or a computer restart, with no error codes. The video card called for a minimal of 350W PSU, And that is what I installed. SO I figured this may be a power problem, So I took that one back and bought a BFG 550w PSU and installed it. Still the same problem. Ill get maybe a few seconds of 3d Acceleration before I get a error. I also had a few Blue Screens and Dumps in windows 7, And my pc restarted while downloading WOW and watching Youtube at the same time.

I havn't seen a restart with the 550W PSU yet, But I only installed it 30 minutes ago.

So Here are my system specs (Laugh it up, All old stuff =D)

AMD 3100+ 1.8ghz
2 GIGs of DDR Ram
1 Gig MSI R4550 (ATI Radeon HD 4550)
550W Power Supply
FIC K8MC51G NVIDIA C51G Socket 754 mATX Motherboard & Sempron 3000+ 1.8 GHz CPU Combo - C-K8MC51G-S3000-K3 (Mobo)
Windows 7 and Windows XP Sp3 (I reformated and went back to Win XP hoping it would help)

Any help will be appreciated.
If I am missing any specs just let me know

EDIT: I did clean my case out, I cleaned my heatsink on CPU a few weeks ago. There is no dust in the case. I installed all the lasted Drivers for the video card, along with CPU hotfixes and almost everything Device Doctor Portable told me I needed to.

 

[Tweak]

Device Doctor Portable isn't always a great solution and it might be simply an issue with one of the drivers that were updated. Personally I'd get the latest audio, video, chipset, and nic drivers from the manufacturers sites and install them or hit ati for video and nvidia for chipset as sometimes they have newer than the manufacturer, especially with video drivers. (I really don't use manufacturers releases for video at all and try not to whenever I can get the newer versions from the chipset manufacturer).

 

[Psychoticus]

ok straight off the top of my head i would say the problem is the PSU/Graphics card, normally you would need atleast a 500watt PSU to run even a decent 512MB graphics card, test that out and let me know what happens

 

[Tweak]

ok straight off the top of my head i would say the problem is the PSU/Graphics card, normally you would need atleast a 500watt PSU to run even a decent 512MB graphics card, test that out and let me know what happens

HAHA, you know I forgot to even mention that since I got off trying to make a point on the software...but I certainly agree that more power should be used and never ever try to meet the minimum, I tend to take the suggested and try to top it slightly...that's a safe place to aim, for my personal systems I just go highend 1K (or more) and be done with it. Too much is never enough anyways right?!?!

 

[sjc@blainecs]

What about running it under some stress test software. We have used Eurosoft to help us stress test machines after service. It can help test hardware and report failures.

It can also test 3d settings. Also you mention device drivers but have you updated the OS patches and specifically DX9-10?

I am sure there are others and maybe better ones so if anyone has any recommendations ..

sjc
Blaine Computer Services