Enough juice ?

[sportbilly]

Hi

I have a Q6600 @ 3ghz and a Radeon 4850 (512mb) plus 2 gb ram. Single hard disc and DVD drive. I am running a seasonic 430W PSU.

I bought the PC pre-built second hand off a web forum classifieds section at a cheap price.

I am running a 24" NEC monitor @ 1920x1200.

I mainly play racing sims iRacing, rFactor and GTR Evo but fancy trying Crysis Warhead and Far Cry 2.

I am thinking of trading the 4850 to CEX who will give me £75 store credit and buying a 4890. I`m guessing it will be a little touch and go with the PSU though.

That said it runs the 4850 no problem now even when overclocked.

Looking at various reviews it seems that the total system draw should be less than 350w. The seasonic is reputed to be quite efficient but even at 80% that`s pushing it.

I would just buy it and try it but if it means getting a new PSU then I might be tempted by a 4870x2 instead.

On that note the motherboard is quite old - an asus P5b-e. Would that have any problems running a x2 card - I vaguely remember reading something about needing a particular PCI-e bus v2 ?

I`m hoping going from 512mb to 1gb card at that resolution will help coupled with a nice speed upgrade - 25%+ ?

All suggestions welcome.

Thanks

 

[ArcAneTSGK]

It will be close, i'm not sure the 4890 will run on that PSU.

500W is the bare minimum i would go with a 4890.

I think under load the 4890 uses close to ~380W, so as i say, it will be clsoe.

 

[95thrifles]

And to answer your other question, yes if your mobo uses old PCI-E 1.0 I believe that would bottleneck the x2 as its bandwidth would be lower than the cards

 

[jbloggs]

I ran a HD 4890 on a Gigabyte EP45 UD3P with E8400 @4.2GHz, 4GBs ram, 3 HDDs a couple of TV cards, X-Fi XtremeMusic and one DVD rewriter on a Corsair VX 450w without any problems, so I would think a 430w Seasonic should be alright as it is a quality PSU.

 

[sportbilly]

I ran a HD 4890 on a Gigabyte EP45 UD3P with E8400 @4.2GHz, 4GBs ram, 3 HDDs a couple of TV cards, X-Fi XtremeMusic and one DVD rewriter on a Corsair VX 450w without any problems, so I would think a 430w Seasonic should be alright as it is a quality PSU.

Hmmm - Think I might give it a try just hold back on the overclocking.

Cheers