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Geek Culture / why doesn't gpu manufacturers mention anything about psu usage?

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Lukas W
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Posted: 29th Aug 2006 13:17 Edited at: 29th Aug 2006 13:21
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i am on the lookout for a new gpu card and i would like to know if i need to buy a new psu aswell; i can't find any manufacturer that write anything about how much of a psu their card need.

i have a 350w psu, and i remember my brother got an "ATI x800GTO" with a 350w psu, which didn't work at all.

is there perhaps some kind of "rule" that i don't know of?
like maybe a low-budget card requires a 300w psu, a mid-budget card require 400w psu, and so on and so on. I don't know.

i've got interested in the "XFX GeForce 7600GT 256MB GDDR3 XXX" card which i assume is a major upgrade from my "Gainward GeForve 6600GT 128MB GDDR3".

but as i said, i don't know anything about it's requirements!

so any ideas of where i may look? or does anyone have a 7600gt, and would like to share some information?

The "7600GT XXX" is an overclocked version of the 7600GT so i assume it require a bit more psu power than the original.?

thanks.

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Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 29th Aug 2006 13:26
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I dunno, silly probaly. Aria is good for the info and requirements on things, I think I have seen psu requirements for something, I assume they will tell you for GFX cards as well.

http://www.aria.co.uk/

If not, a new one isn't too pricey, ranging up to around £50 on the linked website.

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Lukas W
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Posted: 29th Aug 2006 13:38 Edited at: 29th Aug 2006 13:41
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Great website. some problems with the layout, but very much information indeed. nothing about PSU requirements though.

yea, a 400w psu is about £37.75 in norway. hmm a 500w is £50.28 so it's pretty much the same. i guess it wouldn't hurt to get a new one, but at the moment I can't afford both, so i would very much like to know if i can buy it today

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spooky
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Posted: 29th Aug 2006 13:49
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I just bought a Club-3D 7600GS AGP card and website and manual says it requires a 350W psu so I had to upgrade my 300W psu - I bought a 400W one to be safe.

On XFX website you can download manual for that card you are interested in - it says you need a 350W psu at least, but that psu must have a supplementary PCI-E power lead. This is because card can not draw enough power off motherboard.

You do have a PCI-E motherbard don't you? A lot of people (like me) still have AGP.

Boo!
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Lukas W
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Posted: 29th Aug 2006 14:35
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i see. i never though about looking at the manual.
ok so i need to buy a new powersupply then. hmm guess i have to wait to purchase this.

yes i have a PCI-E motherboard. but on my old card i didn't need an extra power cable connected. i guess i have to read the manual

thanks for the help everyone!

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spooky
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Posted: 29th Aug 2006 14:44
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Actually you might be lucky. Doing some googling, and also looking at big pictures of that card, it appears it does not need its own power cable. Apparantly that card draws enough power from mobo.

Boo!
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BatVink
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Posted: 29th Aug 2006 15:23
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It would also depend on what else you have in your machine. For example, you could have a dual core processor, 2 hard drives, a CD drive and DVD burner, physics card, SCSI interface, several USB peripherals...and that in itself would be a huge drain.



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CattleRustler
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Posted: 29th Aug 2006 15:36
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it seems, these days, a 500w psu is becoming the minimum. I had a 450w in my pc which was recommended by Nvidia when I got my pci-e 6800 ultra about a year ago. Recently my psu took a partial nose-dive and stopped providing enough juice to the system. I went and got a somewhat fancy 500w psu with the nice braided and configuarable wire setup - also with sata power connectors for the drives, and of course the pci-e power lead, as mentioned above.

Bottom line, a pci-e system is going to need more juice than an agp system. Although the newer cards are coming down in power requirements while still providing more grafx power.

Physics, Science, and Mathematics do not lie - only people do.
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Lukas W
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Posted: 29th Aug 2006 16:05 Edited at: 30th Aug 2006 09:22
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Quote: " It would also depend on what else you have in your machine."

Lets see.. i have two s-ata drives, two ide cd drives, 1gig of ram, a 64bit processor, a PCI Sound card and a wireless Network card.

with my 6600GT this runs perfectly fine on the 350w psu.

if the 7600GT requires a 350w minimum i take it i need atleast 400w to get all the other stuff runnig aswell.. or i could buy a 500w just to be safe.

i did some research and it appears that now-a-days the only psu's you'll find are those with an additional 75w PCI-E cable (atleast here in norway). i guess my PSU is rather old.

i also found out that nobody have the gfx card available until 09.09.06 or later, and by that date i will get my next salary and can buy the PSU and GFX card in one pack

edit, fixed quote

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HandK
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Posted: 29th Aug 2006 22:56
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The bigger Psu you buy, the longer it will be before you buy anotherone

H&K
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Lukas W
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Posted: 30th Aug 2006 09:29
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yea, that might be true.

dude the 7600GT XXX is better than the 7900GT:

and yet it's 2/3 times cheaper! link

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geecee3
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Posted: 30th Aug 2006 16:14
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heh, if your going to buy a large PSU then its best to spend plenty money to get a good one, the problem with PSU's is quite simple, under low loading conditions the efficiency pf the PSU drops like a stone, it really does. you really want to go for a decent psu, I'm currently powering 2 x800 class GPU's with 256Mb each in an athlon 64 with 2 gig of dual channel ram and 2 HDD raid with all the extra trimmings on a 300Watt supply, the PSU is made by seasonic and puts out roughly the same as a low efficiency PSU at 500 watts. the more you spend the more stable and efficient the psu will be under high and low stress loads which is better for that killer graphics card you want. the PSU's that come in the cheap imported cases from china are stupidly inefficient.

I have also had a maxxed out 64 with 9800XT running on a whopping 235Watt psu without any issues. when you see quotes for PSU's in the range of 500-600 watts, thats just over the top, the manafactures assume your using cheap PSU's hense the high quotes, when in reality your lucky if you draw more than 66% of your PSU's total output. think green and don't kill the planet with half kilowatt psu's, spend the extra and make the world a better place. you simply don't need 500watts+. Lower end PSU's falling over on high end cards is to be expected, seeing as cheap 'inneficient' psu's are actually the cause of most computer hardware failures out there.

Ohd Chinese Ploverb say : Wise Eskimo, not eat yerrow snow.
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Lukas W
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Posted: 3rd Oct 2006 19:03
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sorry to revive this thread, but i still haven't bought that card yet.
mainly because they didn't have one in stock when i was looking.

but i have been searching around for other cards in the same price range, kept in mind what Richard said in another thread, just as old as this: that it didn't matter much if the ramdac was higher, but it matters what memory interface it uses "256bit or 128bit".
he didn't use those exact words, but this is how i understood what he said.

Anyway,
recently i have been looking for other cards in the same price range as this one.
i found the 7900GS. i did some research, and here is the comparison:

it wasn't much of a difference.

i searched for some benchmarking results. the 7900GS is far better than the 7600GT, BUT i can't find any benchmarks like "7900GS vs. 7600GT XXX".
and as you've probably guessed the 7600GT XXX is better than the 7600GT.

so i am kind of stuck in what to choose.
the 7600GT XXX or the 7900GS.

any opinions on this?

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Sid Sinister
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Posted: 3rd Oct 2006 22:28
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Go here to estimate how much Wattage you need. It's always good to add another 100W to what it's saying in case you upgrade later. Also make sure you have over 20A on the 12V Rail. If not be sure to have dual 12V Rails at 18A.
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Lukas W
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Posted: 6th Oct 2006 19:37
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thank you.

after loads of research, i found the 7900GS was almost 30% better than the 7600GT
It can alse be overclocked to match (and even become better than) the 7900GT.

So my decition is made, and I am going to buy the 7900GS and a 400W PSU.

Only one week until i get my salary, yay.

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Phaelax
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Posted: 7th Oct 2006 02:22
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the 7900 is going to be better than a 7600, overclocked or not. You're basically starting out with a higher performance baseline, even if GS is the entry sub-model.

I was actually looking at the XFX 7600GT last night for a new system. In the reviews people claim great performance, but it gets some lag with Oblivion at highest settings. (well duh) I don't play much more than Thief or AoE, so all I really needed was a PCIe card since agp hardly exists anymore. On review did mention that the card's fan can get quite loud at times, like a jet engine he described. That's kind of pushing me away from the XFX a little.

For awhile, Nvidia cards needed an extra power connection. I'm not sure if that's still common on their newer cards or not, but as for power consumption it also depends on what processor you're running.

I ran dual Athlons with 4 harddrives and 2 cdroms on a 400w PSU. I don't believe anyone who spends money on a 500w PSU really needs it. Especially since newer CPU's are supposedly using less power than the Athlons I was running. But if you do buy a new power supply, dont buy a cheap on sale brand that says 600w for $40. Get a trusted name that'll run more efficiently and have low power fluctuations. Because if its not stable, you could lose your whole system. (as I'm about to mention in a new thread)

"Using Unix is the computing equivalent of listening only to music by David Cassidy" - Rob Pike
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Lukas W
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Posted: 7th Oct 2006 12:45
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Looking at the link that Sid Sinister posted, i see that my computer, currently, is using 247W.

the 7900GS requires a 400W PSU (i downloaded the .pdf manual).
but it didn't say anything about an aditional pci-e power connector slot. but i will get the PSU with one anyway, just to be safe.

the psu i am getting is this http://komplett.co.uk/k/ki.asp?sku=317272&view=detailed (£38)

i don't really know what to look for in a PSU other than the amount of numbers before the W. :/

would it be better then to buy this http://komplett.co.uk/k/ki.asp?sku=320995 instead because its £74?

The reason why i want to buy a new card is because i can't play games today witout some annoying lagging, or freezes.

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jinzai
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Posted: 7th Oct 2006 13:13
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The simple anwser is that gpu manufacturers have no control on how your wattage is distributed in a PC, or what type of PC you will be using their product in. The lion's share of power consumption is on the +5VDC, and the core processor voltage, which is usually derived from the +5VDC. It is heavily loaded by all logic attached to it...ISA, PCI, all drives, LEDS, whatever else you have attached. Then, there is -5VDC, and +-12VDC. USB is also powered by the p/s.

They (very correctly, just like all UL listed electronic components) do however, tell you how much power they consume. You then take that figure for your entire system...and go from there. Watts = voltage X current. Add that up for all voltages, and that is the minimun PS you need.

...Or, you could just go by the seat of your pants.
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