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PSU Requirement (real world) for GTX470 SLI

oweneades

oweneades

oweneades

Soldato
Joined
17 Jul 2005
Posts
9,856
Hi all,

Basically I want to have a dabble a Eyefinity / Surround (not 3D) and am currently in the process of completing a cost anaylsis of all the different setups possible (taking into account whether I would need a new case, adaptor etc).

Anyway the one sticking point I have is GTX470 SLI and the power requirement.

I have a Corsair TX750 and thanks to reading a multitude of different reviews (all with varying power consumption results) I am genuinely unsure whether my PSU would be fine for a GTX470 SLI setup.

I won't ever be using Furmark so thats not an issue in terms of power consumption, I will be gaming and doing general work.

The rest of my system is:

Core i7 @ 4ghz (1.33v vcore)
Gigabyte EX58 UD5
6GB PC10666 DDR3 memory
1 x 500GB HD
1 x SATA DVD Burner
Corsair H50
5 case fans

What do you guys think?

Cheers
 
A good quality 750watt is the minimum I'd want to try it on with any decent spec PC... and closer to 900watt with an average PSU.
 
Thanks for the replies guys.

Fizzle - Are your cards overclocked at all?

Based on the various reviews it appears that for gaming I should be fine yet Furmark full load would breach the limit.
 
you could probably get away with a 650w if you left every component at stock speeds

750w will be pushing it for overclocked dual 470's and the overclocked i7 with 1.33v though
 
HW91 said:
you could probably get away with a 650w if you left every component at stock speeds

750w will be pushing it for overclocked dual 470's and the overclocked i7 with 1.33v though
Click to expand...

Hmmmm looking around you are quite correct.

My plan was to get the cards, see how they run with a mild overclock in Surround and then get a new PSU if its required.

The other option is to run Twin GTX460 in SLI (heavily overclocked of course) but after conversing with a member over on Bit-tech (who runs two overclocked GTX460 in SLI with surround) it appears they simply don't have enough memory to run Just Cause 2 smoothly with the details cranked (memory usage spikes over 1GB quite easily without tweaking).

Its still annoying though that Surround vs Eyefinity benchmarks are so thin on the ground. I know we have the HardOCP review for GTX480SLI vs HD5870 CF but what about the other setups.
 
23740.png


from Anandtech
 
^ Single GeForce 470 power consumption tops at 260W from this chart alone, meaning two would draw around 520W which is quite a lot. A heavily overclocked Core i7 would not leave much or any room for overclocking the GPUs on Corsair 750W IMO. It would cope well enough though if you left them at stock.
 
^ don't forget they're using an overclocked i7 which uses about 160w depending on voltage and the rest of the build probably uses around 25-40w

edit: plus that chart shows absolute full load which you will never see unless you're playing modern games on the PC in 5 years time
 
I ran 470 SLI on a Coolermaster CM850 initially, I was getting lockups, reboots etc and couldn't nail the issue down until I removed the 24atx pin and found it had partially melted into the corresponding socket on the motherboard, basically ruining both the mobo and PSU.

A bit of googling revealed it to be an issue with high end multi GPUs drawing too much power. I replaced the motherboard and updated the PSU with an Enermax Revolution 1250 and it's since been perfect.

I've since realised that you really can't skimp on the power supply, it's far more expensive in the long run. If you overclock the CPU and 470s I'd definitely upgrade.
 
HW91 said:
^ don't forget they're using an overclocked i7 which uses about 160w depending on voltage and the rest of the build probably uses around 25-40w

edit: plus that chart shows absolute full load which you will never see unless you're playing modern games on the PC in 5 years time
Click to expand...

Indeed not only does it not have GTX470 in SLI but it is for Furmark, something I really don't give a monkeys about.

Heck on the same review the anandtech extract was taken from above it has the power consumption when running Crysis. The GTX 480 SLI only pulls 668watts in this setup vs 851 when running furmark.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2977/...x-470-6-months-late-was-it-worth-the-wait-/19

I think however that I will be cutting it a bit close. Stock I should be fine but tbh the GTX 470 arn't that great at stock hence they would need overclocking and thats where I would run into issues. Perhaps my PSU would be enough, however I don't want to take the risk.

2 x HD5850 in CF for now I think.
 
Sorry to Hijack your thread, I'm currently weighing up a similar setup however I already have the Corsair HX 850W (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=ca-019-cs&tool=3), looking at the benchmarks below with their setup (almost identical to mine, however i have 1tb hdd and 120gb ssd.) it seems like it would handle it fine? the total system power draw is around 540w.

processor: intel core i7 920(es) @ 4.0ghz (turbo mode enabled)
memory: corsair 3x2gb dominator ddr3 1600mhz
motherboard: gigabyte ex58-ud5
cooling: coolit boreas mtec + scythe fan controller (off for power consuption tests)
disk drive: pioneer dvd writer
hard drive: western digital caviar black 640gb
power supply: corsair hx1000w
monitor: samsung 305t 30” widescreen lcd
os: windows 7 ultimate n x64 sp1

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...0999-nvidia-geforce-gtx-470-sli-review-2.html
 
Is that your setup? can't the mTEC use up to something like 200w?

other than that it should be fine, although upgrade from XP, it's the paranoid/poor old mans OS (although you're obviously not poor seeing as you have an i7 920 and an mTEC)
 
HW91 said:
Is that your setup? can't the mTEC use up to something like 200w?

other than that it should be fine, although upgrade from XP, it's the paranoid/poor old mans OS (although you're obviously not poor seeing as you have an i7 920 and an mTEC)
Click to expand...

No, it's not my setup but very similar, I overlooked they listed Windows XP, I have Windows 7 64x like any sane person should have! I couldn't be bothered to list out all my equipment, that's taken off benchmark page. :P
 
Looks like Anandtech have answered my question for me.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3836/msis-geforce-n470gtx-gtx-470-sli/6

The numbers are like for like to the above. 579 watts when running Crysis.

740 when running Furmark.

Interestingly they also overclocked a single card (same review). When running Crysis it pulled roughly 60 watts more than the standard clocked MSI card. I could assume that you could double this taking the 579 watts to over 710 (overclocked in SLI). For me this is a little too close for comfort.

I think I will probably get a single HD5850 now (so I can still run eyefinity when required) and then see what the 68XX / Nvidia refresh brings.
 
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