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Is my PSU enough for a DirectX 11 card?

CurlyWhirly

CurlyWhirly

CurlyWhirly

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Joined
24 May 2003
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1,429
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UK
I have a 600W OCZ PSU in my PC and what I was wondering is whether I would need to upgrade it when the next generation DirectX 11 graphics cards are released later this year?


I'm currently running a factory overclocked 9800 GTX+ and a Q9650 quad core processor along with 4 GB of 800 Mhz RAM and a X-Fi sound card.
My O/S is Vista Home Premium 64-bit.

I'm not looking into running Crossfire or SLI as my motherboard doesn't do it as it only has the single PCI Express slot.

Talking of PCI Express, am I right in thinking that I don't have the fastest PCI Express interface as mine is only PCI-E x16 :confused:


2wmqlvq.jpg
 
DeathTyrant said:
PCI-E x16 is the max on all the boards that I know of, so no, you will be ok. Is is PCI-E 2.0?
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I'm not sure if PCI-E x16 is the same as PCI-E 2.0 :confused:

I'll have to google it.


DeathTyrant said:
As for DX11 GPUs, well a 600w PSU should be plenty for a single card, and even enough for an X2 card. Unless they go nuts with super massive chips.
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A single card will do me fine so if that's true then I'll be okay.
 
Alexrose1uk said:
I'd say you should be fine, the OCZ aren't quite as strong as say Corsair, Tagan or Antec, but they're still pretty decent. It depends on how power efficient the next round is; as more powerful =! hugely higher power draw.
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I'll just have to wait and see then :)

I was going to upgrade to a GTX 285 but was advised to wait for the next generation of graphics cards (my PSU isn't up to powering a GTX 295 as it requires a minimum 680W PSU according to Nvidia)
 
Talrinys said:
New boards have PCI-E 2 which doubles the bandwidth per lanes, designed for newer cards, i'm not sure how CPU-Z would show it, but i'm absolutely convinced that the current bandwidth with a PCI-E1 16x link will not be enough for the new cards. That doesn't mean you might not see an improvement, just that in some/many cases you won't see max output of the card.
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Thanks for that.

My mobo is a budget model so it probably won't have this feature - it's a Foxconn G31MX Series.

If I won't benefit fully from the new DirectX 11 cards (when they are released) then I may as well upgrade my graphics card to either a GTX 285 or GTX 295 (if my 600W PSU can handle it even though Nvidia states that a 680W PSU is required as has been pointed out a few posts ago)
 
Rezident said:
Yes they always seems to grossly overstate the "minimum" required PSU for all cards. I suppose they just want to be on the ultra conservative side of safe. I recently installed a 4670 in my brother's Dell, the 4670 box said it needed a "minimum 400 watt PSU" but it works perfectly with a 305 watt PSU.

OP: use a power supply calculator, like this one: http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp
to see how much headroom you've got for your graphics card. 600W should be fine depending on its efficiency.
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Well according to the official specs, my 600W OCZ PSU has 4x12v rails each of 18A making a total of 72A - is this good :confused:

I think that a PCI-E card uses the 12v rails?
 
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