"Paul" wrote in message
...
Pugsley wrote:
If a card requirements say 400w will it work with a 375 psu? Is 25w
that important?

The specification is a lie.

The card does not use 400W for itself.

That is an estimate for the entire computer.

You can compute the real power requirements for yourself.
Xbitlabs.com has done actual power measurements for cards,
so we can get something closer to a correct value. There
is an example here, of information for a 9800 GT video card.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/gra...t_5.html#sect0

"83.2 watts (measured)"

If xbitlabs.com doesn't have a power measurement (and, they've
stopped doing them), then you use the estimated value from
gpureview.com instead.

http://www.gpureview.com/GeForce-9800-GT-card-575.html

"105 watts (estimated)"

If you add together the power requirements for each component
in the computer, you can then determine whether the power
supply is adequate or not. Say you have a 95W processor, some
12W hard drives, a 50W motherboard. You can add them together,
to get total power (95+12+12+50 + 83.2 = 252.2 watts).

Paul

A couple of other review sites that actually measure the power consumption
of video cards a

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/?...ry=Video+Cards

and this German review site that you can run through a translator, if
necessary:

http://ht4u.net/grafikkarten/