insufficient power on a 6600gt??

i've had my system up and running smoothly for a good three months now, but as of late everytime i boot into windows i get an nvidia power indicator notice that states:

the nvidia system sentinel is reporting that the nvidia-powered graphics card is not receiving sufficient power.

to protect your hardware from potential damage or causing a potential system lockup, the graphics processor has lowered its performance to a level that allows continued safe operations.

i did some google-ing and some searching on the forums here and could only find people having this problem with 6800gts and ultras. the 6600gt i have does not have a power connector on it. i can't think of anything i've done that would cause this error to pop up. no hardware has changed in the three months i've had this system, and it's all high quality stuff. what could be the problem?

specs:
gigabyte nforce4 sli
athlon 64 3000+
corsair xpert xms
bfg geforce 6600gt pci-e
pc power and cooling turbo 510w sli

the graphics card temps are around 65C, if that has any relevance...

Is the card in the slot all the way? Thats all I can think of...maybe its not in the slot thus causing it to somehow not get enough power. Also, dont just push it in, pull it all the way out and then put it in that way. You said that it says it lowers the performance or whatever, have you noticed a decrease in gaming? It might just be some kind of bug. If reseating it doesnt work, try different drivers.

Edit: Is that temp idle or load? My 6800gt idles only 2c lower then that so it shouldn't be the problem.

Other then that you have me beat. I've never heard of that before. Let us know how it goes and I hope it works out for you.

While your power supply may be from a good company, it could be defective.

nobi125 said:

While your power supply may be from a good company, it could be defective.

Click to expand...

Thats a good point. But at the same time it doesnt seem like anything else of his isn't getting enough power...so I'm willing to bet its the card.

to answer your question, the performance was not very good. i installed the coolbits registry hack and the drivers reported to be running at 299mhz core and 599 mhz memory... the 65C temp was at idle. so i took your suggestions and took the card out, (dusted it off ), and then put it back in. once i did that and turned the computer back on, after the boot sequence passed the windows xp loading screen the monitor went blank! i was about to cry thinking my video card had just died on me. however, when i rebooted i did see the bios screen so i knew the card wasn't totally dead. i booted into safe mode and luckily was able to see the desktop. i uninstalled the nvidia display drivers (i was using forceware 77.72 whql) and rebooted. i downgraded to the last drivers i had before the 7x series which was 67.66 non-whql. now i no longer get the error about insufficient power and my speeds are at 525mhz/1.05ghz (it's a bfg 6600gt oc). the core temp even dropped down to 61C at idle.

so this is very perplexing... i'm wondering if anyone else is having these issues and if nvidia knows about them. i'm going to try firing up a game and see what kind of performance i get. hopefully all will be well...

Glad it worked out for you. About your idle dropping, thats normal...from what I hear. Supposidly in the last drivers they didnt make it to where it droped the voltage in 2d mode thus causing a higher idle. But anywho, let us know how the games go.

Also, are these your factory speeds:525mhz/1.05ghz? I dont know anything about the card. If so that means that it was mostly likely a bug in the drivers that made it scale down your speeds.

yes, those are the factory default speeds. bfg ships their video cards overclocked.

i played some gta san andreas last night and everything seemed smooth. guess i won't get to use the new forceware drivers.

Glad it worked out for ya

i had a sli rig give the low power once in a while on boot up-- turns out the psu was only putting out 11.65v on the 12v rail !

thats the only time i had it happen though.

after nearly 10 months without another issue i am getting this error again. i have been running the 81.98 drivers since they came out and have not had any problems. after doing a routine windows update and reboot this same message has popped up again.

the updates i installed were as follows:

• Windows XP Security Update for Windows XP (KB908531)
• Windows XP Security Update for Windows XP (KB911562)
• Windows XP Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool - April 2006 (KB890830)
• Windows XP Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer for Windows XP (KB912812)

this happened this morning and i had to leave for work before getting to look into specifics of the problem or do any troubleshooting. has anyone else had this problem?

i'll answer my own question in case anyone else stumbles upon this thread with the same issue...

after a long morning of uninstalling and reinstalling everything under the sun, i have solved my problem. here's the procedure i went through...

1. uninstalled windows update KB908531, still got the nvidia sentinel message
2. uninstalled windows update KB911562, still got the nvidia sentinel message
3. uninstalled windows update KB912812, still got the nvidia sentinel message, determined from this that the windows update was most likely not the culprit
4. uninstalled nvidia drivers, rebooted, installed latest 84.21 drivers, still got the nvidia sentinel message
5. uninstalled all nvidia drivers, including network access manager, nvmixer, and nforce (VERY upset now because windows says my hardware has significantly changed at this point and i must reactivate windows), rebooted
6. booted into safe mode, used driver cleaner pro to remove all nvidia drivers
7. reinstalled all windows updates
8. reinstalled nvidia nforce drivers, network access manager, and nvmixer, rebooted
9. reinstalled latest 84.21 drivers, still got the nvidia sentinel message
10. extremely frustrated at this point, i determined it was time to mess around with the video card itself, so i powered off the system
11. noticed that in 10 months a whole lot of dust can accumulate in a pc, so i cleaned it all out and started up the pc again
12. voila! no more nvidia sentinel message

the moral of the story is, even if your hardware isn't touched, it could still be a hardware related problem. i was absolutely convinced that there was nothing wrong with my hardware because it hadn't been touched in 10 months but in fact a layer of dust can severely hinder your hardware's performance.

cowgod said:

i'll answer my own question in case anyone else stumbles upon this thread with the same issue...

after a long morning of uninstalling and reinstalling everything under the sun, i have solved my problem. here's the procedure i went through...

1. uninstalled windows update KB908531, still got the nvidia sentinel message
2. uninstalled windows update KB911562, still got the nvidia sentinel message
3. uninstalled windows update KB912812, still got the nvidia sentinel message, determined from this that the windows update was most likely not the culprit
4. uninstalled nvidia drivers, rebooted, installed latest 84.21 drivers, still got the nvidia sentinel message
5. uninstalled all nvidia drivers, including network access manager, nvmixer, and nforce (VERY upset now because windows says my hardware has significantly changed at this point and i must reactivate windows), rebooted
6. booted into safe mode, used driver cleaner pro to remove all nvidia drivers
7. reinstalled all windows updates
8. reinstalled nvidia nforce drivers, network access manager, and nvmixer, rebooted
9. reinstalled latest 84.21 drivers, still got the nvidia sentinel message
10. extremely frustrated at this point, i determined it was time to mess around with the video card itself, so i powered off the system
11. noticed that in 10 months a whole lot of dust can accumulate in a pc, so i cleaned it all out and started up the pc again
12. voila! no more nvidia sentinel message

the moral of the story is, even if your hardware isn't touched, it could still be a hardware related problem. i was absolutely convinced that there was nothing wrong with my hardware because it hadn't been touched in 10 months but in fact a layer of dust can severely hinder your hardware's performance.

Click to expand...

Indeed!

btw, try and get that card OCed a bit more...I still think that these Leadtek Extreme 6600GTs are way better than the BFGs....but nobody's proven me wrong yet

the problem is back again. i called bfg tech support (which was excellent by the way) and we came to the conclusion that my +12 V rail is only putting out 11.37 V. time to rma my pc p&c supply...

cowgod said:

the problem is back again. i called bfg tech support (which was excellent by the way) and we came to the conclusion that my +12 V rail is only putting out 11.37 V. time to rma my pc p&c supply...

Click to expand...

Funny, I remember telling you that 10 months ago lol.

The thing about a defective power supply is that they don't always perform bad. They have good days and bad days sometimes. Most people just don't want to believe that a great company like PC P&C Cooling is capable of making a defective product.

you bought one of the most expensive 500 watt power supplies and it turned out to be defective. that does suck. i hope you didnt actually think you needed 510 watts to power your system. that psu is way overkill.

i bought it with the assumption that it would be the last psu i would ever buy again. i will eventually be running sli video cards and a couple more hard drives and wanted to ensure power would never be an issue.

cowgod said:

i bought it with the assumption that it would be the last psu i would ever buy again. i will eventually be running sli video cards and a couple more hard drives and wanted to ensure power would never be an issue.

Click to expand...

Have you started the RMA process?

If so how's PC P&C treating you?

well, i need to be awarded the dumbass of the year award here... somewhere along the line i managed to unplug my 4 pin ATX power connector from the motherboard and never plugged it back in. once i plugged it back in the nvidia power warning went away.

i also checked the voltages on the psu with a multimeter and found it to fluctuate between 12.16 and 12.17 on the +12v and between 5.16 and 5.18 on the +5v during the boot process up to idle windows and then under full load. obviously the software i was using doesn't give a very accurate reading.

cowgod said:

well, i need to be awarded the dumbass of the year award here... somewhere along the line i managed to unplug my 4 pin ATX power connector from the motherboard and never plugged it back in. once i plugged it back in the nvidia power warning went away.

i also checked the voltages on the psu with a multimeter and found it to fluctuate between 12.16 and 12.17 on the +12v and between 5.16 and 5.18 on the +5v during the boot process up to idle windows and then under full load. obviously the software i was using doesn't give a very accurate reading.

Click to expand...

Ha, smooth.

Everyone makes dumb mistakes like that.

Sometimes you just need to have someone else look at it.

Also, fluctuations on the rails aren't that odd as long as they stay within spec.

nobi125 said:

Ha, smooth.

Everyone makes dumb mistakes like that.

Sometimes you just need to have someone else look at it.

Also, fluctuations on the rails aren't that odd as long as they stay within spec.

Click to expand...

Right. Nearly all PSUs are going to fluctuate some. The only ones I know to stay VERY close to perfect spec is the PC Power and Cooling series. PCPC even sends test records and test results with all their 1000 watts at least. I've forgotten my PCI E power plug a few times. It happens. This is my first PCI E board, I've never had to look for it before. My last video card was a 9600 Pro that didn't need extra power. Anyway, live and learn.