comcast said:
I was wondering if anyone has read anything on the power requirements on the
upcoming x800. I 've seen some specs on it but they didn't mention power
requirements. I just read that the new nvidia requires 480 WATTS!
I think John offered a good explanation, but it's still safe to say that
you should really have a beefy and decent brand name power supply if you
want to venture into the upcoming video cards. I also think the 480W
recommendation was based on a person having a high-end system to begin
with, which I think would be the target audience of such cards in the
first place. Myself, I have a 2.8GHz processor, 1GB RAM, a sound card,
modem, 2 hard drives, 2 optical drives and a floppy drive in my case. I
also have a 9800 Pro video card. My tower case is a Lian-Li PC-60 which
has three case fans in it as well. My current power supply is an
Enermax 431W and I remember having some power problems at first when I
upgraded to my 2.8GHz CPU (along with a new motherboard and RAM) in the
fall of 2003. It turned out to be an oversight of sorts since I had
just about all of my high-drain devices hooked into the same lead. Once
I redistributed things around a little bit, all was fine again. Still,
it was a scare, and in my case, I would believe it if someone said to me
that I had to up my power supply for these new upcoming cards!