video card with 185 watt ps.

  • Thread starter Thread starter Karl P Anderson
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Karl P Anderson

What graphics card can I get that will support Directx 8.0 and works on
a pc with a 185 watt power supply. All the ones I can find that
reference a power supply say 250 watt. The salesman at Best Buy said the
ATI 9250 will work with a 185 watt power supply? That box didn't
identify a power supply and I can't find any reference on line.
 
You are out of luck. Modern video cards' power needs start at 250 real
watts. Time to upgrade your power supply unit.
 
The cards that consume a lot of power have auxiliary power connectors.

The Radeon 9250 does not; it gets all of its power through the AGP slot.

I believe that the best Radeon card with no auxiliary power connector is the
9600. (It's a DX9 card. Aside from that, its general performance is
significantly better than that of a 9250, if that matters to you.) If you
buy it from a good online vendor (www.newegg.com), it's not much more
expensive than the 9250, which I think is basically a relabeled Radeon 8XXX
series product.

On the nVidia side, the Geforce 6200 also gets its power through the AGP
slot. I expect that is the best available card at the moment that needs no
auxiliary power. I'd recommend against the TC (Turbo Cache) models, but I
believe that TC does not exist in AGP versions.

There are other considerations: does your mainboard have an AGP 3.0 slot?
(That would support AGP 4X/8X.) I don't recall the details, but there are
several types of AGP slot, and you want to make sure that whatever card you
get is physically compatible.

Just curious: what sort of PC is it?

Regards,

Bob Knowlden

Address may be scrambled. Replace nkbob with bobkn.

"Only fools are positive." (Groucho Marx)
 
Bob,
I have an IBM Netvista 2292-35U. Original description: Intel Pentium 4
1.8GHz (256KB), 128MB, 40GB 7200RPM IDE HDD, PCI Microtower (4x5),
nVidia Vanta 32MB 4X AGP, 16x10x40x CD-RW, 56K modem, Intel 10/100
Ethernet, Windows XP Home. I have added a 120GB HD and will replace the
CD-RW with a CD-RW/DVD. I also added 512MB. So it looks like it will
support an AGP 4x/8x. I have heard the AGP's run hotter than a PCI card.
I don't do a lot of gameing, but I would like the better 3D graphics. 8^)
 
What graphics card can I get that will support Directx 8.0 and works on
a pc with a 185 watt power supply. All the ones I can find that
reference a power supply say 250 watt. The salesman at Best Buy said the
ATI 9250 will work with a 185 watt power supply? That box didn't
identify a power supply and I can't find any reference on line.
Click to expand...

The power specifications for PCs tend to be rather inflated.
I've used both an ATI 9600 and a 9600SE in 165 watt Athlon systems
without a problem, so the 9250 would almost certainly work. There
would be an issue only if you're using a really power hungry processor.
Most of the other components in a system only use a few watts.
 
I think that your system has an Intel 845 chispet, and a 4X AGP slot. My
memory is a little hazy on the AGP standards, but this may not be an AGP 3.0
slot. However, I think that most AGP 3.0 cards would be backwards
compatible.

Flipping through the various Geforce 6200 cards at Newegg, I see power
requirement specs ranging from 200W to 350W. (The latter is probably bogus -
350W ought to be adequate for a 6600GT, which uses auxiliary power.)

Another suggestion for a card: a used nVidia Geforce 4 series card, like a
4200 (not a 440MX). That would be a major improvement over a 32 MB Vanta
(basically a TNT2 with a halved memory bandwidth, if memory serves). Those
were very nice cards; I liked my old 4200 quite a lot. The GF4 series were
basically 4X AGP cards (some of the latter models supported 8X AGP, but they
were back-compatible).

Karl P Anderson said:
Bob,
I have an IBM Netvista 2292-35U. Original description: Intel Pentium 4
1.8GHz (256KB), 128MB, 40GB 7200RPM IDE HDD, PCI Microtower (4x5), nVidia
Vanta 32MB 4X AGP, 16x10x40x CD-RW, 56K modem, Intel 10/100 Ethernet,
Windows XP Home. I have added a 120GB HD and will replace the CD-RW with a
CD-RW/DVD. I also added 512MB. So it looks like it will support an AGP
4x/8x. I have heard the AGP's run hotter than a PCI card. I don't do a lot
of gameing, but I would like the better 3D graphics. 8^)

Bob Knowlden wrote:
Click to expand...
(snip)
 
....
DaveW said:
You are out of luck. Modern video cards' power needs start at 250 real
watts. Time to upgrade your power supply unit.
Click to expand...
....

Of course not. Modern video cards come nowhere near 250 watts. Most probably
*peak* at roughly the same area as microprocessors: ~75 watts.
On top of that, the power supply rating is the *sum* of all outputs: 3.3v, 5v,
12v, -12v,
etc. Typically the 3.3v and 5v outputs are the bulk of the power, roughly 1/2 each.
However, the actual details are entirely dependent of the particular power supply.
If you go to www.newegg.com and look at the pictures of the cases/power supplies,
they are pretty good at displaying the labels with the power specs. You'll see that
a "300watt" power supply can have quite a wide range of 3.3v and 5v capabilities.

The "power supply requirements" are only a reeeeealy crude attempt by the
board makers to ensure some minimum level of 3.3v or 5v (depending on the
AGP version).


--
Dan (Woj...) [dmaster](no space)[at](no space)[lucent](no space)[dot](no
space)[com]
===============================
"I play the piano no more running honey
This time to the sky I’ll sing if clouds don’t hear me
To the sun I’ll cry and even if I’m blinded
I’ll try moon gazer because with you I’m stronger"
 
What graphics card can I get that will support Directx 8.0 and
works on
a pc with a 185 watt power supply. All the ones I can find
that
reference a power supply say 250 watt. The salesman at Best
Buy said the
ATI 9250 will work with a 185 watt power supply? That box
didn't
identify a power supply and I can't find any reference on
line.
Click to expand...

a power supply is like 20$CND, if you tryed running that on low power
it would cause great stress on the motherboard and probably end up
crashing on you. it sounds like your pc could handle a geforce 5xxx
AGP id look into that there like 70$CND now and really good 128MB
cards espesally for there price
 
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