plz help me find a video card I can use with my psu

[digitalman42]

I have a X1950 Pro would like to upgrade my video card. I want to make sure my power supply will handle it though. I have a Antec Earthwatts EA500D. Duo 2 1.8, 4 sticks of ram, one hard drive and one dvd writer. I was looking at the Ati 4850,, Nvidia 9800 GTX+ and the Asus 9800 GT Ultimate. They range from about 240 to 275 watts load. Will my PSU be able to handle that?

 

[adairusmc]

I think that they will. I was running a 9800GX2 on an antec 550 for a while, with more hard drives, quad core and tons of fans and it worked fine.

 

[Elfear]

I used an oced HD 4870 and a heavily oced E8400 with my EA500D. You'll be fine running the video cards you specified with some room to spare.

 

[Denithor]

I've got a GTX 260 running on my EA500 right now. Earlier today I had a 9600GT in there at the same time and the PSU didn't flinch.

You're going to want to overclock that CPU if you don't want to limit your new GPU.

 

[faxon]

yea definitely OC the cpu. or if you can afford it, just upgrade to an e8500 at the same time, and OC that. if you need to buy an aftermarket cooler, the cost of just upgrading the cpu might be more worth it in the long run lol

 

[vj8usa]

Like everyone else said, OCing that CPU will really make a difference with a 4850/9800. I'm guessing that's an E2160 - with a decent mobo and RAM, you can probably take it to 3.0GHz with nearly stock voltage. I'm running mine on the crappy stock intel cooler, and it's fine. It does make a massive difference in games, too - at 1.8, it'll really hold back modern video cards, but 3+GHz is usually enough to get you playable framerates.

 

[Tempered81]

Originally posted by: digitalman42
I have a X1950 Pro would like to upgrade my video card. I want to make sure my power supply will handle it though. I have a Antec Earthwatts EA500D. Duo 2 1.8, 4 sticks of ram, one hard drive and one dvd writer. I was looking at the Ati 4850,, Nvidia 9800 GTX+ and the Asus 9800 GT Ultimate. They range from about 240 to 275 watts load. Will my PSU be able to handle that?

It should, unless you have many peripherals like HDDs DVDRWs, powered firewire/USB devices, ETC.

 

[Lightning983]

I can only tell you what my expiriences are. I also had the X1950Pro, and switched to 4870 1GB. I have a Belkin UPS, and i use its load sensor to see how much power i'm using.
Now with 5 HDD's, C2Duo OC'ed to 3.3Ghz, 8GB of RAM and a 4870 & 4 fans the load never goes over 280W

So my guess would be that you'll be more than fine with a 500W power supply. The only concern would be if you have enough connectors for the cards.