Need a new Vid Card

[Lostroth]

title says it all. i need a new vid card but i have no clue whats good now a days. i have an ATI 9800 Pro 128. but i need something better for all these new games coming out. i run an AMD 64 bit 3200+ with an Asus mobo. i don't have exact specs since i'm currently on vacation and nowhere near my home so any ideas will be helpful.

[MONOLITH]

If you're running a 9800 Pro, I assume you have an AGP slot and not SLI, correct?

If so, trust me on this... I also have an AGP, and I was looking to get a new card, and all I could find was SLI cards.

However, ATI made the X1950 Pro, and it's designed for people like you and me, who want a really good AGP card. The X1950 Pro is THE best AGP card you buy. AFter this you will need an SLI Mobo to do any better.

Sonedecker gave me a link to the X1950, and then there was a whole thread about it, including some issues with needing a much larger power supply. But it was worth it. This is a smokin' fast card.

The following thread has a link to the where you can buy the card, information and test comparisons about the card from Toms Hardware, as well as how I got around the power supply issue.

here... Bottom of page 1 starts Sonedeckers post about the card...

http://www.blackfootstudios.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=477&st=0

[MindlessOath]

your going to want a 19xx or something from nvida.  the 9800 isnt a bad card for its time, it was great, but then they released the x800 and then the x1900 the 1900 had shader model3 which is good for hdr lighting.


ati decided to make a bomb this year with there 29xx cards - and im not talking about a good bomb, it tanked.

anyways nvidia isnt the greatest this year either, but they are the better of two evils this time around.

i think the 8800gts 320mb was around 259 to 289$ but dont quote me on that.

hrm.. i didnt read what mono just said (hey im really tired)... but he has a point, if you have agp... but if your going to upgrade and get PCI-Express then by all means get a much faster card for a good price

anyways, here is a review on Radeon HD 2900 XT vs. 320MB 8800 GTS.
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTM1MSwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

[DaSmerg]

I have an 8800 GTS and have had it for several months now.  I would advise that unless you're running one of the Vista versions, stay away from it.  Nvidia's Win XP drivers are screwy.

Look at Nvidia's 7900 series cards.  Great performance, nice feature set and with the introduction of more cards in the 8x00 series, their getting nice in price.

[Lostroth]

ok i'm back home again.

yeah i should have mentioned i have an AGP slot. looks like the X1950 Pro is exactly what i need. although what size of power supply am i gonna need, i believe i'm running with a 450 power supply right now, is that gonna be enough? although i should replace it anyway, it's not like their expensive. now what about the manufactuer of the card? does that really matter? because i'm leaning towards getting this one

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=23287&vpn=X1950PRO512ASB&manufacture=Diamond

but i'm gonna double check what my mobo is, cause now that i think about it, it might have a PCI-E slot in it. only problem is my sounds card is in it i believe

but it's late and i just got home like 4 hours ago from my vacation, and it was a very long trip home. around 30 hour drive

[MONOLITH]

is that gonna be enough?

Read the link I gave you.

I had a 550 watt and it was not enough to run the rest of the the PC, and the X1950.

Right now, I still have my rig the way it's described in that thread, with two power supplies connected to it; the 550 connected to the mobo and the vid card (the mobo and vid card MUST be powered from the same source, trust me), and a second 350 watt PSU connected to all my drives.


You need some real power for the X1950 Pro. But it's worth it.

[Lostroth]

then it looks like i'll be picking up another power supply at the same time, thanks for all the help.

[MindlessOath]

if you have a good power supply it shouldnt be a problem.  try OCZ or pc power and cooling and you should be good with around 400-450watts give or take some. anything else MIGHT work, but then again might is a gamble.

[MONOLITH]

you should be good with around 400-450watts give or take some.

Don't be so certain of this. Google the net, the X1950 is a notorious powerhog.

If you read above, I bought a 550 watt for mine. A decent one with two seperate power rails, etc.  It was NOT enough to power the X1950, a mobo, 2 hard drives and 2 disc drives.


The power specs for the X1950 reccomend 30 amps on a single 12 volt rail.  That is 12 V x 30 A = 360 watts, just for the vid card alone. That only leaves 90 watts to run everything else in your PC.

Trust me, I just went through all this last month, and I still have a 550 W PSU just running my X1950 and my mobo. A seperate 350 runs everything else.

If you're going to buy a new PSU for $65 or so (for a 450/550), you may as well spend a little bit more and buy a 700 to 850 Watt.  Otherwise when you get home and hook everything up and your new card only gives you a black screen, you'll wish you had.

[MONOLITH]

now what about the manufactuer of the card? does that really matter? because i'm leaning towards getting this one

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=23287&vpn=X1950PRO512ASB&manufacture=Diamond(

Looks like yours may be a souped up version of mine, and it's also almost double the cost.

For that price you could buy my card plus a really big power supply.  


Seriously, I would compare the specs of the different cards side by side to see if the differences equal the cost. The one you chose looks pretty good though.

[MindlessOath]

you should be good with around 400-450watts give or take some.

Don't be so certain of this. Google the net, the X1950 is a notorious powerhog.

If you read above, I bought a 550 watt for mine. A decent one with two seperate power rails, etc.  It was NOT enough to power the X1950, a mobo, 2 hard drives and 2 disc drives.


The power specs for the X1950 reccomend 30 amps on a single 12 volt rail.  That is 12 V x 30 A = 360 watts, just for the vid card alone. That only leaves 90 watts to run everything else in your PC.

Trust me, I just went through all this last month, and I still have a 550 W PSU just running my X1950 and my mobo. A seperate 350 runs everything else.

If you're going to buy a new PSU for $65 or so (for a 450/550), you may as well spend a little bit more and buy a 700 to 850 Watt.  Otherwise when you get home and hook everything up and your new card only gives you a black screen, you'll wish you had.

seriously im really positive that a power supply from "PC power and COOLING" will do the job just fine! OCZ just bought pc power and cooling and OCZ had power supplies that Compaired very closely to them.

i would bet MONEY on it working perfectly! with one of those two power supplies! these are not your average powersupplies, these are actually good ones with a great reputation behind them.  you can check out the new power supply reviews at www.hardocp.com - i DONT think they review those power supplies but you can see they know what your talking about and that not all power supplies created equily... there are some better than others even tho they are rated lower in watts... its all about the psu insides!

[MONOLITH]

its all about the psu insides!

"better quality" insides do not change the ampacity output of the equipment. You may get better quality power (less spikes and fluctuations), and the unit may generate less heat (larger AWG wire size used in the coils), and it's lifespan may be longer.

But 450 watts output is 450 watts output.

Wattage is simply Voltage x Current, and it's the same in any power supply. There's either enough, or there isn't. The X1950 has two seperate power connections to be made, and at 12 volts it needs at least 30 amps to run it smoothly.

There's also the factor of what else he has in his rig he is trying to power up. Like mine, 550 wasn't enough, and totally ignoring my first hand incident of just a few weeks ago, you're PROMISING him a 450 watt will work for him, and you haven't asked him what else is in his rig.

[Ronin]

Not all power supplies actually put out the rated power.  Many cheap ones put out barely half the rated power.  The good name brand ones will at least put out the rated power and some exceed their ratings (PC Power & Cooling).


You do need to get a PSU rated for the right power.  But with "cheapo" power supplies you need to get one that FAR exceeds it rating to get adequate power.  And even then they usually fluctuate like crazy.  Most are terrible at keeping their outputs at (or even near) the rated voltages.

So you can get by with buying a good quality power supply that just exceeds the required output.  Or you will have to buy a far over-rated (in more ways than one) cheapo PSU.

If you buy at $45 700 watt PSU, you can be sure it's not putting out 700 watts nor is it likely to be putting out clean well regulated voltage it outputs.

I buy name brand (high quality) power supplies always.  And I buy them with at least 20% higher rating that I think I'll need.  They cost more.  But you get what you pay for usually.  And everything in your PC depends on that power supply.  It's not worth saving a few bucks to buy a cheap power supply when it could go south on you and take the rest of your PC with it.

And I heartily second Mono's recommendation on the X1950Pro.  This card beats any of the nVidia 7X00 cards in my view (this does not include the 7950 or the 8X00s).  I bought one of these to upgrade the GeForce 6600 card in my wife's PC.  It ROCKS!.

By the way, my wife's PC has a ThermalTake TR2-500W PSU.  With two SATA-300 drives, two optical drives and the X1950 on a 3.06Ghz P4 and 2GB of PC-4200 RAM.  Everything works fine and the power in the Intel Monitor are all dead on.

[MONOLITH]

Many cheap ones put out barely half the rated power.

Interesting. I'd like to know how they get away with that from a false advertising/legal sense.

[MindlessOath]

...
wattage is simply Voltage x Current, and it's the same in any power supply. There's either enough, or there isn't. The X1950 has two seperate power connections to be made, and at 12 volts it needs at least 30 amps to run it smoothly.

http://www.pcpower.com/home/
you didnt even see. they have powersupplies that supply 19a to 60a and they cost from 50$ - 200$ and thats just ONE type that they sell.

and they are rated exactly what they output and dont skimp on those specs.

i wont even buy what everyone thinks is good, antec - notgood, etc... just ocz and pc power and cooling, they are the only two i have seen in the past few years that get the TOP scores in all tests  done to them.  everyone else doesnt get even close. with one of these you can run all the power you need without buying more power. ie if you wanted you could probably run 350w and still not have a problem! but since you said 30amps most of those come in at around 400w - but i didnt look so i was guessing.

but i would still bet money it would work - i own alot of powersupplies and these are the only ones still around and lasting for the longest time with the most hardware running on them.

[Lazerblade]

According to this:

http://www.journeysystems.com/?powercalc

a system can run fine with less than 350W PS with the following specs:
2 HDD (any type)
2 optical DVD drives (ROM or RW)
2 sticks RAM
2 PCI cards
up to their highest video card (which draws around 70-80W)
2 USB devices that draw power
AMD Athlon XP up to 3gHz (or equivalent)

I'm not sure about the requirements for the x1950. Mono- do you have a link that states the power consumption/requirement for that card?

In Tech Report's Jan 2007 comparison of several high end graphics cards, their Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 based, highest power, dual ATI Radeon X1950 XTX Crossfire system pulled only 400W peak AC from the wall. Based on the ~80% efficiency of the PSU used in that system, this translates to 320W in DC power delivery, less than half of the 750W rating of the smallest PSU on the aforementioned nVidia certified list.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article726-page1.html

[MONOLITH]

you didnt even see.

I don't know what it is you think I didn't see. All I Said was 450 watts is 450 watts, no matter how you slice it.  You showed me a link that shows what sizes they sell. Ok. So what didn't I see?

Mono- do you have a link that states the power consumption/requirement for that card?

I'm looking at the box right now. It's the Saphire X1950 Pro 512M GDDR3 AGP.

"450 watt power supply or greater, 30 amps on 12 volt rail recommended"
"For Crossfire, 550 watt power supply or greater, 38 amps on 12 volt rail"


And I just checked the PSU that I had purchased...  Antec BP500U

http://www.antec.com/specs/BP500U_spe.html

Now here is something real interesting; look at that spec sheet link above. Maximum output load on the Antec 500W is 30 amps.  That's only 360 Watts!

So my 500 watt PSU can only put out 360 Watts? WTF?

[Zazoo]

Now here is something real interesting; look at that spec sheet link above. Maximum output load on the Antec 500W is 30 amps.  That's only 360 Watts!

So my 500 watt PSU can only put out 360 Watts? WTF?

500W refers to the maximum load the entire power supply unit (all rails: +12V, +5V, +3.3V, etc.) can support at once.
(Or 480W according to the spec sheet)

~Mike

[MindlessOath]

this is the psu i have now.
http://www.pcpower.com/products/viewproduct.php?show=T51ATX

510W (650W peak) @ 50°C (industrial rated)
2X more actual power than "500W" home PSUs
Heavy-duty caps, inductors, heat sinks, etc.
Extended sag and surge protection (.99 PFC)
+12VDC output @ 34A/38A peak (Single Rail)
Ultra-tight voltage regulation (+VDC@ 1%)
Super-clean output (+VDC ripple @ 0.5%)
New, quieter fan speed control circuit
Designed for ATX M/Bs with 20-pin connector
Industry's strongest warranty program (5 yrs)

but they also have quiet models....
http://www.pcpower.com/products/viewproduct.php?show=S61EPS
this one has 49a on the 12v rail. its rated 610w at 40C

does your antec say what wattage it will get at a specific temp? probably not, meaning its STILL not going to produce the correct wattage you want.
also that antec has two 12v rails, each rated at 18a each. is that bad? well, its not neccessarly bad.
antec = not as good as people think.

these other well known brands are not bad, they just make there specs very ehhh meaning your never buying what you THINK you might be buying.

and im not trying to say mynes better or whatever, im just trying to inform.

[Zazoo]

My power supply > all of yours.


~Mike