How do you figure out if a PSU is providing enough wattage?

MachineDogMachineDog New
edited March 2009 in Hardware
^^ As the title says.

I realized that my problems with lag, according to the monitors, aren't that my computer is maxing out. At the moments that it occurs on the charts the GPU usage drops out. My theory was that perhaps it's the PSU? I'm probably completely wrong so offer whatever theories you might have.

lagj.jpg

PSU is: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182030

Comments

  • NiGHTSNiGHTS San Diego Icrontian
    edited March 2009
    Multimeter/PSU tester. BIOS should give readings as well. "Safe" is usually +/- .5v in either direction for 12, 3.3, and 5v readouts.
  • MachineDogMachineDog New
    edited March 2009
    NiGHTS wrote:
    Multimeter/PSU tester. BIOS should give readings as well. "Safe" is usually +/- .5v in either direction for 12, 3.3, and 5v readouts.

    I'm not sure how to/if I can test that way but I am able to max the GPU/CPU out just fine it appears.

    newlag.jpg

    I just can't figure out what those downspikes of lag are coming from in the first image.
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited March 2009
    To my knowledge, lag is not usually a symptom of an underpowered PSU. An underpowered PSU will usually cause freezes or system crashes. Please try and elaborate on what you mean by "lag."
  • MachineDogMachineDog New
    edited March 2009
    Leonardo wrote:
    To my knowledge, lag is not usually a symptom of an underpowered PSU. An underpowered PSU will usually cause freezes or system crashes. Please try and elaborate on what you mean by "lag."

    I don't think it's the PSU atm. The lag is split-second moments where I'll lock up to 0FPS and then back to 20-30FPS. I can't figure out what's causing it.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited March 2009
    How's your hard drive? Formatted lately? Have the newest chipset drivers?
  • MachineDogMachineDog New
    edited March 2009
    Thrax wrote:
    How's your hard drive? Formatted lately? Have the newest chipset drivers?

    Drive: Unsure, no actual problems with it.
    Formatted lately: Been a year i think.
    Drivers: Yes.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited March 2009
    Format.
  • MachineDogMachineDog New
    edited March 2009
    Thrax wrote:
    Format.


    Is this the only thing it could be, or the easiest way to fix thing it could be?
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited March 2009
    The easiest way to fix any software, which is most likely the problem.
  • MochanMochan Philippines
    edited March 2009
    It's almost impossible that it's a PSU problem. If it were, your system might not even boot. And if it does, then it might fry any time now. ;P

    I think the most likely reason is you are encountering a bottleneck elsewhere in your system, probably with your memory or your CPU. Your memory might even have become bad. Or going by Thrax's line of thought, your harddisk is mad fragmented and causing problems in data access, or there's too much crap loaded up on your PC that it is causing performance degradation because all the processes are hogging your CPU.

    Are you familiar with what items should be running on a Windows XP install (or whatever OS you are using?) If so press CTRL-SHIFT-ESC and check out if you are running any unwanted processes (maybe a virus).

    If you've been playing with an OS for a while you should have committed to mind what processes belong on that list already.
  • MochanMochan Philippines
    edited March 2009
    BTW what are the specs of your system, so we can have an idea whether your PC is getting bottlenecked somewhere.
  • MachineDogMachineDog New
    edited March 2009
    Mochan wrote:
    It's almost impossible that it's a PSU problem. If it were, your system might not even boot. And if it does, then it might fry any time now. ;P

    I think the most likely reason is you are encountering a bottleneck elsewhere in your system, probably with your memory or your CPU. Your memory might even have become bad. Or going by Thrax's line of thought, your harddisk is mad fragmented and causing problems in data access, or there's too much crap loaded up on your PC that it is causing performance degradation because all the processes are hogging your CPU.

    Are you familiar with what items should be running on a Windows XP install (or whatever OS you are using?) If so press CTRL-SHIFT-ESC and check out if you are running any unwanted processes (maybe a virus).

    If you've been playing with an OS for a while you should have committed to mind what processes belong on that list already.

    What? The CPU isn't being redlined on the first chart, is it? I have near perfect performance on the second chart (where I'm running two clients to max both the CPU and GPU). So obviously it has nothing to do with usage of anything in the system that would occur whilst flying around dalaran, since apparently even on a system half as powerful as mine it would run fine under those conditions.

    Which means the problem has *nothing* to do with the GPU or CPU, it has something probably to do with the IO systems leading to the CPU/GPU, which is the memory, southbridge, northbridge, hard drive, etc I believe.

    I'm going with Thrax on this one but with a slight twist, I will test how my performance is when I put the game on my second hard drive, which was formatted a couple of weeks ago. To keep the ball rolling, what should I look into if this doesn't fix the problem? My assumption is that you've already thought through my second drive idea and put it down because you think the problem actually lies with Windows (you mentioned software?), and not an actual drive issue. Which really means I probably shouldn't do my aforementioned test but I will anyway because it's going to be annoying to reinstall everything.
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