Graphics Upgrading Graphics Card, Question on PSU

Alright, In short, my X1800XT 512 isn't cutting it anymore. I'm looking at upgrading to a 9800 GX2 in the near future, though I'm wondering if my PSU will be able to handle the new card. The 'required' minimum wattage is 600 watts, however if I'm not mistaken they also expect you to be running higher up hardware than I've got in my PC now.

I plugged my system specs (found in my signature) into the eXtreme PSU Calc, with the 9800 GX2, and I'm showing a recommended spec under 400 watts. If my 500 watt will do the job until I upgrade the rest of my system, I see no point in upgrading just yet.

Need opinions and/or similar experiences please.

 

I'd say that PSU will be fine, but, as usual YMMV. My system always comes out at around 650W on a PSU calculator, but this 480W isn't showing any signs of struggle.

 

Yeah, should be fine. A 9800GX2 might be a little bottnecked on your current system though.

 

I expect there to be bottlenecking, though I expect it to be CPU / Bus limited, and not graphics card limited. Main reason for getting the card now, is so I can spend less money later when I get around to upgrading, or so I can go Quad-SLi when I upgrade without having to shell out over a grand for cards at one time.

Well, and the increased performance on my current system, even if it is limited.

 

Suck it and see, I say.

If you need a new PSU, save up and get one, but most likely you will not need to.

 

In the worst case you could damage your gpu if its underpowered, so you could buy one of these zalman fan controllers which have a function for the "Real time display of power consumption."
They cost about £30 from http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=683692
So you could keep your psu, buy the gpu and the zalman and it will tell you exactly how much power is being drawn from the psu.
If you do choose this route, please take note that if your PSU is peaking any more than about 420w under full load playing a top title game for a couple of hours, then you will be stressing most of your system hardware, not just the gpu and your psu fan will be running at full speed and trust me if you hate fan noise like me you'll crack up with the noise.

 

I'm finishing a review of 9800GX2 and the power my rig w/ it took from the grid was 310 Watts at worst. That's toughly 250 Watts of DC coming out of the power supply. Them X2s are more power hunry than my current C2D E6750 (3,2 GHz), but you should still have almost 200 watts of headroom.

THE ISSUE however is not the wattage, it's the right connectors! Be warned that not every 9800GX2 comes with a 8-pin power adapter and if you get such a card and don't have a connector in your PSU then you're simply **** outta luck. I can tell from experience that those adapter can't be bought separately.

ALSO the X2 4400+, even how OCd, will be one hell of a bottleneck. Even a single 8800GTS was really hurting with a X2 4600+... And that's why I have Intel now.

 

Based on everything I've read, and by my own calculations, I shouldn't have any issue running the card, though you are correct Japala, the PSU I have doesn't have an 8 pin connector, though an adapter is easy enough to come by (I do research before I dive into anything . As for the 4400+ being a bottleneck, I'm aware of that... My motherboard doesn't have PCIe 2.0 either (which isn't a huge deal, but it also doesn't help performance). The main reason for the card, is to improve current performance as much as I possibly can before I upgrade the rest of the components down the road a short way.

As for overclocking... I would overclock the chip, but my motherboard seems to have a bad power regulator... Even at stock speeds, it will crash out under full load for any period of time. I could overclock my old 3500+ without any issue, though once I put the dual core in, I get a loud electrical hum on idle, and crashing on full load. Yet another reason to upgrade the whole system before too long...

 

Oh you found a place where to get one? I searched through all the local stores and also the major online stores here and had no luck finding one.

btw I'm not Japala, I'm Jipa

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814143128

Well I've known you as Japala since I first joined Metku way back when, so my apologies!