8800 Ultra Extreme had missing PCI_E power onboard

[fearz]

Hi, I recently bought an 8800 Ultra Extreme,

I had a low PSU (580W) and was advised to upgrade, so yesterday I bought a 650W Zephyr PSU + Gigabyte 3d Galaxy2 liquid cooling system.

I connected everything (including the 2 power 6 pin into the card) but in my motherboard I have a PCI_E (4 pin) power to be connected to that gives extra power to the card,

I have a Gigabyte M59-SLI-S5 mobo.

so it stayed up for about 4 hours yesterday, (testing games, and using the pc) without connecting that 4 pin power, I noticed lower FPS, but temps were more than fine..

Until now I realized the 4 pin power for the PCI_E onboard is not connected, so I connected it.

now the FPS is back to normal, temps are still very normal, but i'm worried there might be something damaged with the card?

I tested a few games and its fine, but i'm just worried. cus I have my 7950 GX2 artifacted, not sure why tho.

Right now temps are 66C idle 74C on load.

Please tell me that the card will be fine...

Thanks

 

[ripbox]

hehe im very supprised it even ran without the power connector plugged in
usualy you would get an alarm sounding from the card but that says to me that you mobo was sending enough power to the card via the mobo..maybe you computer ran a little slow with out it however i cant see why it would cause any damage to the card in general
the only reason sor a seperate supply is so that you mobo can operate with ease and not pinch all the pover that you mobo needs to run your pc

 

[Asky]

As long as the temps are fine and you arent getting aritifacts or lockups,your card is running fine,dont worry !
But 66C idle does seem a little too high ,then again 74C Load is pretty good for an 8800 Ultra.Check your Idle temps again,i dont think they wud be so high.

 

[roy69]

I am suprised it worked. If you are worried run a benchmarking program and see if there are any artifacts when it is stressed. If it seemes to be running ok then it will not be damaged.

 

[sosrandom]

The 4 pin power is usually(on everything ive seen) for a 2 card setup to provide enough power through the motherboard socket, without it plugged in you shouldn't notice a difference since the power doesn't go to the first socket.