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Video card suggestion HD output for 350w/18a supply?

I

imported_bowens

Member
Hi, I have an Antec NSK1380, and the 350w ps provides 18a on the +12v rail. Is there a video card that can operate within this constraint and still drive HD 1080 output for movies? this is not a gamer project.

thx,

brad
 
Originally posted by: happy medium
That card will run on a 250 watt psu easy. Thats gotta be a miss print.
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its not a misprint. they always overestimate the power supply requirements.

also you dont even know what the rest of his specs are so you cant really just say it will run on a 250 watt psu. anyway I cant possibly imagine a setup that would have trouble running the 4350 with a 300 watts and 18 amps. people who start threads like this should always give out all their specs.
 
I can't give out specs for what I don't have🙂 At this point, all I have is the case & ps; it's the limiting factor, as the ps is custom for this case. It should be a very simple machine, though, perhaps just one hard drive and a 65w cpu, like an E4450.

The problem with the video cards, is that they specify the ps for the entire computer, instead of just saying what their component draw is.

Originally posted by: toyota
Originally posted by: happy medium
That card will run on a 250 watt psu easy. Thats gotta be a miss print.
Click to expand...
... people who start threads like this should always give out all their specs.
Click to expand...

 
This website says 226w should be the draw, so can I conclude that a 350w ps is going to be adequate?
http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

System Type: 1 physical CPU
Motherboard: Regular - Desktop
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 2200 MHz Allendale
CPU Utilization (TDP): 85% TDP
RAM: 4 Sticks DDR2 SDRAM
Video Card: ATI Radeon HD 4550
Video Type: Single Card
Regular SATA: 2 HDDs
DVD-RW/DVD+RW Drive: 1 Drive
Sound Blaster - All Models: Yes
Additional PCI Card (avg): 1 Card
USB: 2 Devices
Front Bay LCD Display: Yes
Fans, Regular: 1 Fan 120mm
Keyboard and mouse: Yes
System Load: 90 %
Capacitor Aging (+ W %): 15 %
Recommended Wattage: 226 Watts
 
Dude the 4550 is a sub 20w (~1.5a) card. It would run on a 100w psu. You could probably run a few on an 18a PSU.
 
I'm not trying to threadjack but I do have a Q about this. The OP is asking for a low power card for HD, sounds good, but what about the CPU? My HTPC runs an Opteron 165 @ 2.52 with a 9600GSO and I have sound problems playing HD. After looking into it and getting all the proper codecs and software I still have sound lag with 1080p HD-DVD's and was told this was due to my slower cpu.

If thats truly the case won't the OP have to make sure his CPU is up to the task to play HD or is their something else the vid card is supposed to handle that it's not on my setup?
 
Originally posted by: bowens
spike, have you tried copying the dvd to the hd and playing it from there?
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Negative but I have tried downloaded 1080p MKV content and I still get some sound problems, but not all the time. There are certain HD-DVD's that I can count on sound lag issues (no so with the blu-rays oddly enough) and most of the time it occures with the MKV's. I don't know about other formats.
 
spike, open task manager and see how much CPU the media player is using. if it's using a lot of CPU, it isnt using your GPU's HD decode path, since the software you are using probably doesnt support it, if its not an issue with the codec itself. im not 100%, but im pretty sure MKVs are CPU accelerated, and trying to decode HD content on a cpu takes a ton of CPU time
 
My $0.02... I've got a 4350 that accelerates all my content (SD & HD) just fine. My HTPC has an e7200, 3 drives, DVD, 4GB RAM, the 4350, 2 tuner cards and it pulls only 85-90w from the wall under normal use. I can't recall exactly what full load wattage was, but it was maybe 120w or so. According to a review I saw (I think from xbit labs) the card itself only pulls about 8-9w at idle and only 15w at load. I got this card to replace a 7600GT and the before/after wattage numbers were pretty close to that. So as long as it's a quality 350w (seems like it is) you should be just fine.

@spike - something is knocking your audio out of sync, but I'm not sure it's your CPU (is that a dual-core?). Codecs are a really fuzzy thing, not all the video cards decode all the codecs so it would depend on what the MKV file was encoded with. Check out which ones give you trouble and see if there is a pattern. Use gspot codec appliance to see what codec is used by each file. See if some use drastically more CPU than others. If you're on windows, sometimes a codec pack helps... and sometimes it makes things DRASTICALLY worse, so a completely clean install with *only* the codecs you need might be the solution.
 
If you're only concerned with video output and not gaming, some of the newer integrated chipsets from AMD and Nvidia could do the trick. Might save you a little money, and possibly an easier setup if you are doing an HTPC. Of course, even light gaming I'd go with a discrete GPU.

Here's a recent anandtech article on the 785G that compares recent chipsets:
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3615
 
I've got an AMD 3800+ (2.4ghz) with a 3450 that runs all HD material perfectly. The power supply is a 4 year old matx 250 watt! Zero problems.
 
Originally posted by: bowens
it says that a 400w ps is the minimum req....How can I find out what the +12v requirement is?

Originally posted by: happy medium
This 4350 with native HDMI will do the trick for 30$ , 20$ after rebate.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814125251
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Click to expand...

I think the specs from AMD say a 400 watt power supply is recommended, not required. AMD is somewhat confusing in the way they word the requirements for their lower power cards. I am running an HD4650 on a generic 300 watt power supply without problem, so the 4350 or 4550 should be fine on a 350 watt power supply.
 
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