PSU Upgrade

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Hi all,

I have a dell dimension 8300 p4 3.0 (3yrs old) 250watt psu which i recently upgraded to 1.5gig ram and a BFG 256mb 7800 geforce GSOC AGP (No PCI E slot). Now when i was doing this some board members advised that this graphics card would not work without a PSU upgrade. I purchased the card with a view to upgrading the PSU, however when i tried the card with my old psu the card seems to work fine, the system has never crashed (which i thought it might).

My questions are, why is the card running if even the box said it needed 400watt at least? Am i getting the most out of the card, i normally turn all graphics settings upto max, my max monitor res is 1152 x 864 which i use. I am just wondering if i am getting the most out of the card. At present all i play is COD2, will this push the card. Is their a quick way to test my system now to compare it with results i should expect to get.

Thank You in advance.
 
the advice of upgrading the psu while also upgrading your card is for two reasons, one is that you dont overwork your psu to its brink of life, then causing you problems of BSODs, failing components or frying your pc... and no. 2 is an addition of the above, plus that you wont be able to reach its optimum performance..

we never said that it wont work with a lower power psu.. just that some are dodgy and cheap while others are reliable, therefore giving advice for preventing a disaster is better than using more money and time to find the cure...

i dont know much about testing the card, but i think there's 3dmark program or some sorts of benchmark app..
 
N3051M, thanks for the reply, I think it was you too who put me up the the 7800, its been worth it thanks again.

Am i too take it from your reply that while at the moment i may not be pushing the card and therefore dont need all the wattage from the psu, in the future i may and will then run into problems.
 
Am i too take it from your reply that while at the moment i may not be pushing the card and therefore dont need all the wattage from the psu, in the future i may and will then run into problems.
thats probably a good summary of it but yeh.. although i dont know exactly how the vid cards suck up power but i'm trying the best to answer with my level of knowledge in electronics..

so get that psu soon.. they arnt all that expensive for a 400w, maybe about $30-60... just make sure you get a decent brand. Antec, Enermax, coolermaster etc...
 
I have a 300W FSP Group PSU and it works very good, specially with dual 12V rails.
Don´t be fooled about PSU´s wattage, a 500W cheap PSU could be worse than a 300 one.

Good luck!
 
Yeah power supplies are really cheap....check out this one.
Antec Truepower 430W

You could check your voltages while playing a game. If they dip too much then you should probably replace your PSU. Download speedfan and see what your temps, voltages, and fan speeds are while gaming.
Cheers
 
I´m glad we could help you!

If you have any problems, tell us and we´ll do our best to help you.

Cheers!
 
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