How important is power supply for the Video Card?

[snort1]

Received a ATI Radeon 9500 Pro for Christmas. My computer is a 1.1 gig celly on an AT motherboard in an AT Case. The power supply is 230 watts. Inside the install instructions it recomends you have at least a 300 watt power supply. Have not seen any AT power supplys lately, much less any one past 250 watts. Do I have to upgrade again? Case and Motherboard?

 

[sandorski]

Very important nowadays. If your mobo has an ATX power plug, then you won't have to replace it, AT mobos fit fine in ATX cases.

 

[bikinistud]

Have you tried just using that ps? if you don't have alot of things (ie 2 or 3 hard drives, 2 cdroms, 5 add-in cards, etc.) then you could be fine. Some people have been getting away with 250 watt ps and haven't seen them complain yet.

Good luck!

 

[Peter]

The one pitfall with BAT mainboards is that, even when connected to an ATX power supply, don't use the 3.3V rail from the power supply - all I've seen make their own 3.3V on the mainboard. Which means that a stronger power supply won't help you overcome the power limit of the board's AGP slot (which runs on 3.3V power and either 3.3V or 1.5V signalling).

Given that this old board certainly is by AGP 1.0 standard, the Radeon 9500 easily exceeds the power budget in those slots.

HOWEVER, if this card has a separate power connector directly to the power supply unit like the 9700s do, then you can bypass all those limitations.

 

[ChuaChua]

got a 250W PSU and a radeon9500pro. works fine. i think. heh
instead of plugging into the cord that runs to the hard drive, i plugged it into the cord that runs to the cd-rw.
i dont have a lot of stuff installed though. no dvd drives, no pci soundcards.

 

[Peter]

Ah, so your 9500 has that power connector ... good. What brand and model is it?