Buying 9800 Pro, should I be worried about my power supply?

[Scrooge2]

I know the 9800pros have that extra power connecter but how much extra juice does it take? Ati says I should have a 300 w power supply. I can't find any markings on my power supply on how much juice it gives but since it's a mid tower, I am guessing it is SUB 300w. Should I be worried that the card will suck up too much juice?

I have 1 hd, 1 cdr/rw, 1 dvd-rom drive, and a floppy installed. What do you guys think?

 

[usernamemax20charact]

If it's sub 300, you might be okay. But if you had a stronger PSU then your 9800 Pro should also get the benefit of performing better. As it is now, it might not be getting enough juice to run at full potential not to mention the rest of your PC.

 

[Scrooge2]

Power has to do with performace? That's silly, electrical devices either run or they don't, video cards don't have speedstep features like mobile cpus do they?

 

[Nebor]

Originally posted by: Scrooge2
Power has to do with performace? That's silly, electrical devices either run or they don't, video cards don't have speedstep features like mobile cpus do they?

Some of them do.

 

[Scrooge2]

any way I can find out how much power my supply is? I can't find anything on the box signifying to it.

 

[Mingon]

I had my sff computer running a 2.4c@3.1 and an aiw9800 @400/700 on a 180 watt psu

 

[usernamemax20charact]

Originally posted by: Scrooge2
Power has to do with performace? That's silly, electrical devices either run or they don't, video cards don't have speedstep features like mobile cpus do they?

Yes, it's possible. Think brownouts or sags. When there isn't enough juice running through your electrical lines, your house lights may dim or flicker. In the same sense, if there isn't enough juice to power everything, then those devices won't be able to perform at its best capacity (think dimming light). This can happen if you have an underpowered PSU or a crappy one from a crappy manufacturer.

Take a look at the first 3 paragraphs from this story.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: Mingon
I had my sff computer running a 2.4c@3.1 and an aiw9800 @400/700 on a 180 watt psu

Small Form Factor cases use smaller motherboards that draw a lot less power, and thus they can get away with having weaker PSUs.

On a regular ATX case, I would personally recommend a 350W+ name brand PSU.

 

[Lonyo]

There are very few cases with sub 300w PSU's, I would guess yours might BE 300w, but it's highly unlikely to be lower than 300w.
I have a PSU from 4 or so years ago that's 300w, and it was just what there was.
Mainly only SFF PC's use <300w PSU's (Or Dells do I think in some machines).

I'm running a 9800 on a 300w PSU with Barton 2500+, 1GB RAM, 2 optical and 2 HDD's without a problem (except when I overclock too far).

 

[PrayForDeath]

Just curious, but what would happend if you run a 9800Pro on a small PSU (200W for example)? Does it run and crash? Or it doesn't even start? Or you see a message in Windows saying there's not enough power for your GPU?

 

[usernamemax20charact]

Originally posted by: PrayForDeath
Just curious, but what would happend if you run a 9800Pro on a small PSU (200W for example)? Does it run and crash? Or it doesn't even start? Or you see a message in Windows saying there's not enough power for your GPU?

It also depends on your other components such as how many drives, how much power does each component draw, etc. If you had a high end rig and it was all on a 200W PSU, then you might experience lock ups, crashes, etc. It'd just be unstable.

 

[Lonyo]

Originally posted by: usernamemax20charact

Originally posted by: PrayForDeath
Just curious, but what would happend if you run a 9800Pro on a small PSU (200W for example)? Does it run and crash? Or it doesn't even start? Or you see a message in Windows saying there's not enough power for your GPU?

It also depends on your other components such as how many drives, how much power does each component draw, etc. If you had a high end rig and it was all on a 200W PSU, then you might experience lock ups, crashes, etc. It'd just be unstable.

It also depends on the quality of the PSU.
I think Shuttle uses quality low wattage PSU's so there is no real issue, others may have problems though.
I have a 300w PSU and a 400w PSU, I'd rather use the 300w because it offers more juice on the 12v rail, where I need it, than the 400w does.

 

[Pastie321]

I couldn't get my ATI Radeon 9800 Pro to work until I got the power cable configs right, and that was with a 350W PSU.

I had to limit it to HD + Radeon on one cable to get it to run at all.

 

[OMG1Penguin]

You will get errors and generally bad junk if you run with too low of a psu... does your psu say how much amps@+12v it has? That is the important factor.