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Grafix Card & Power Requirements

Sven69

Sven69

Sven69

Associate
Joined
13 Feb 2011
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88
Location
Woodsetts
My old GTX 560 has just Fritzed itself so I need a new card and I don't really want to spend more that £250.

I'm still not sure which route to go AMD or Nvidia, Will my current PSU OCZ600 SXS2 cope with a GTX970 or 390 some reviews say that R390's will need a minimum of 750W.

Or do I cop out & go with the safer & cheaper option of R380x or GTX960 as I only game at 1900x1080 on a 24" Monitor.
 
i cannot see why a 600watt bronze psu would not be able to power a r9 390. They always over estimate the needed watt needed due to **** brands out there listing their PSU 20-30% over what it can actually handle. Now i have no experience with OCZ's PSUs so i cannot comment on the quality of it but 600 watt would be more than enough.

According to tomshardware the r9 390 would not go over 330ish watts during torture tests (thats the whole system as fare as i can tell) and 260ish watt during normal gaming load. Even its the GPU alone it still leaves plenty of headroom.

TL;DR It should be perfectly fine running a 970 or r9 390 as long as the PSU itself isnt total garbage.
 
I'm running an R390 just fine on a 550W SuperFlower.

They over-egg the specs in case someone is using a crappy Q-TEC PSU that doesn't make the rated power. ;)
 
Performance wise how much difference is there between GTX970 & R390 ? & with the resolution I'm gaming at would the 960 / R380x be a big drop
 
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Depends what you are playing really. I've got triples on mine, but it's mainly for iRacing which is still DX9.
 
The difference between the 390 & the 960 is immense. It's the difference between staying at or near 60 fps and hovering around 45. In short, the 390 is absolutely worth it.
 
Oh this is a major bug bear of mine I tell you.
In searching for a 390x I searched what PSU was required. EVERY SINGLE SITE WAS DIFFERENT. some claiming 550w all the way to 750w

Turns out when I used an online calculator, for my exact rig with a 390x at everything on full load I would only draw 475w and that is with me putting in a massive overclock on the CPU and GPU and assuming the DVD and HDD were running constantly.

I totally understand the manufacturer putting in a nice safety buffer, fully understand that. And they don't know what else is in your rig. But at least the websites selling the cards should have some sort of continuity.

But I suppose if you say it needs a 750w PSU then you might sell more PSUs along with the card..... P.S. I'm not referring to OCUK as they have a reasonable and manufacturer recommended 600w for this card. But I have seen some sites as high as 750w. I think this is to up sell a PSU at the same time.
 
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