I bought an AMD card, idk whyFollow

...and it keeps forcing a hard reset, shortly after booting, and about an hour thereafter. I installed it first using the supplied disc, and then when this started happening, I downloaded lolcatalyst, which didn't help, and took up lots of ram.

The card is an Asus made AMD HD 5450.
The operating system is Windows XP professional 32 bit.
2x1gb running in dual channel.
The processor is an Intel Pentium D 2.8ghz, running on two threads. Idek. It appears in Task manager as two, although I'm fairly certain there's only one.
The PC has a 946gz integrated graphics solution, which doesn't suffer from those problems, runs Ffxi with some lag, but hasn't ever crashed.
The motherboard is an Asus P5B TMX GB SI.
The PC had two huge fans, facing the processor with it's own vent, and one in the regular place.
I call it: Rolf.

I don't use it for anything other than Ffxi or MSPinball. It can't possibly be being worked to death.

The card's past it's return date. Am I screwed?

Edited, Jun 14th 2013 5:28pm by Demoncard

Edited, Jun 14th 2013 5:29pm by Demoncard

Yeah, I'd be leaning towards power supply but that particular card only requires a 400 watt PSU, It is possible you are still underwatted if this was a dell or an HP computer you are upgrading, but thats not necessarily the most likely scenario in this case given how little wattage that card draws. I'd check and see if you got a cable lodged in the video card fan itself when you installed it, no fan at idle would tend to overheat the card after around 30 minutes even with large case fans. Also check the CPU fan, etc. If its not that, it could be driver related. Check intel.com for a driver update for that integrated intel card. Even if you aren't using it, it's still present in the system resources and could be conflicting. I'd check the same thing for the other drivers while you are at it.

The next step if that doesn't do the trick, will be to check event viewer (controll panel, administrative tools, event viewer) under system and application to see if there are any crashes or errors reported before the machine crashes in the logs. Also download and check bluescreenview and see if there are any hardware related BSOD's http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html

The other possibility of what is going on here, is you may be hitting the ram limits of a 32 bit operating system. If you have the 1GB ram variant of the 5450, and you have 4GB ram inside your computer, your computer can't access and address all of its ram, and those addresses include the video card ram pool to a certain degree. Windows XP alone can only utilize 3.3GB worth of system ram. With a video card under 512MB, the amount of used ram addresses doesn't really detract from that 3.3GB pool. When you exceed 512MB though, the card memory starts requireing the same addresses that the system memory needs, so you can end up with only 2.5-2.8GB usable system ram. Couple that with a few running programs in the background, whatever the Intel video card has locked up and used, etc, and you could literally just be running out of available ram. Check task Manager and see if your ram and CPU utilization is constantly up pretty high.

Either way, you really should get a new computer. A pentium D is technically dual core, but they are sloooooowwwwwwww. Even a core 2 processor is at a minimum twice as fast. Going with a minimal cost overall upgrade would dramatically speed up your computer and allow you to use more than 4GB ram. You may not be able to use windows 7 with that particular computer by the way, thats one of the motherboards that need a bios update (if they made one) for the windows 7 genuine advantage licensing module to function correctly, same with the P5lD2

Those are connected to Avast Antivirus, your drivers and your memory respectively.

I would check your memory for faults
Uninstall your video card drivers (including obsolete drivers from previous cards, either AMD or Nvidia) and reinstall the new drivers from scratch.
Try turning off Avast (maybe run a different antivirus if you're worried or just don't surf around while testing)

And see if any of those help. Also, knowing how many watts your PSU is may help. Was this an off the shelf computer or something you built? If it's off the shelf, can you give the whole model name/number so people can look up its specs (ex. "Dell Inspiron 4840")?

Didn't work. Still crashes.

This time, it crashed without a blue screen; the sound began to loop, then the display lagged, and then it made a whirring sound and crashed. Still works perfectly fine with the onboard graphics.

Is there any other information I could give you that would help?

Open the case side panel. the power supply is a large square box usually, but not always, near the top rear of the case. it will be the thing that the power cable from the wall plugs into. On the side of that box there should be a label with power supply type information. Please read that off for us.

ALso download and install speedfan from http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php and check your hard disk drive for faults under the S.M.A.R.T. tab. THis could jsut be coincedental failure, maybe the drive got banged around enough to affect the bearing when the card was installed, etc. Might be worth checking anyways. You might also be able to see your system voltages from there.

I think we found your problem.

You have a very weak PSU. It's not uncommon in business class machines that are designed to run spreadsheets and Outlook, not play games or, much less, support extra hardware. The AMD recommends a 400W or greater power supply for your card. There really wasn't any card you could buy that would run on that power supply that wasn't an antique. You'll need to upgrade the PSU to use the (or any) card.

Before you run out and buy a new PSU, you'll need to make sure it's compatible with your case and motherboard. I'll let someone else walk you through that or you might want to just cut your losses and start saving for a more modern system.

Edited, Jun 18th 2013 7:50am by Jophiel

It's 14cm x 15cm x 9cm.

How much would a new power supply cost me? Also, would it be worth trying to return the card under that pretence and getting an Nvidia 4-- something card for another £5?

Edited, Jun 18th 2013 10:43am by Demoncard

It's about three months over the return date, but the guy at the counter said it was compatible with the mobo and the power supply, which should be more than enough to make me eligible for a refund. Then again, I should have known better than to believe him, so maybe it's my fault. I do now, anyway, thanks to you folks.

I was dreading that it would be somewhere between £50 and £100.

http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x17/fireheart450/sdfsdfsdfs.jpg


Edited, Jun 18th 2013 11:19am by Demoncard

You act like AMD did something wrong, or made a bad product... Chances are an nVidia card of similar specs will also require a PSU upgrade.

Bought a 400w one for £20, installing it now.

The 20 pin connector won't come out, no matter how much force I apply. Wriggling it doesn't seem to make it budge.

Edited, Jun 20th 2013 8:55am by Demoncard

Never mind, it's out.

Edited, Jun 20th 2013 9:08am by Demoncard

Let us know if the PSU worked. I'm curious to see if that was the solution.