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Best Nvidia Card for Gaming?
I'm looking for the best Nvidia card for gaming given the
constraint of a 475 Watt power supply. I have room in the Dell XPS 9000 case for a full-length, two slot card. I'm not adverse to installing a bigger power supply if the Dell uses standard connectors. Does anyone have any recommendations? Thanks for any advice you may give. Tom Lake |
#2
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Best Nvidia Card for Gaming?
On Wed, 09 Dec 2009 08:57:46 -0500, Tom Lake wrote:
I'm looking for the best Nvidia card for gaming given the constraint of a 475 Watt power supply. I have room in the Don't know which will fit in that power supply, but can tell you to avoid the GeForce 9600 GT. It recommends a mininum of 26amps on the 12v rail. With a 500w ps that only put out 24amps on the 12v rail, the system would spontaneously reboot, or lockup. Had to replace the ps with a 650w ps that puts out up to 50amp on the 12v rail. Pay close attention to the max output on 12v. Regards, Dave Hodgins -- Change nomail.afraid.org to ody.ca to reply by email. (nomail.afraid.org has been set up specifically for use in usenet. Feel free to use it yourself.) |
#3
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Best Nvidia Card for Gaming?
Tom Lake wrote:
I'm looking for the best Nvidia card for gaming given the constraint of a 475 Watt power supply. I have room in the Dell XPS 9000 case for a full-length, two slot card. I'm not adverse to installing a bigger power supply if the Dell uses standard connectors. Does anyone have any recommendations? Thanks for any advice you may give. Tom Lake A GTX250 will both fit easily and doesn't consume more than a decent 400/450W can put out. Plus it has good all around performance and is readily available. For reference a 250 is a slightly faster rebrand of the 9800GTX+, which was an overclocked process revision (55nm) of the previous 9800GT/GTX, which itself was the offspring of the 8800GT (G92b)... confusing yes. If you feel like upgrading to a decent PSU, like a Corsair 650W or so, you could easily run a GTX260 or 275, both of which are approx the same length as a 250 full length reference card. A good quality PSU of 550W or more is SLI capable as well, so basically it can run any single card config. |
#4
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Best Nvidia Card for Gaming?
Tom Lake wrote:
I'm looking for the best Nvidia card for gaming given the constraint of a 475 Watt power supply. I have room in the Dell XPS 9000 case for a full-length, two slot card. I'm not adverse to installing a bigger power supply if the Dell uses standard connectors. Does anyone have any recommendations? Thanks for any advice you may give. Tom Lake The info available for that Dell is disappointing in quality. I couldn't find a picture of the label on the power supply. The practical limitation may be the capabilities of the 12V1 rail of the supply. Since I don't have a picture of the label, instead of working with the real limit, I can try a less accurate power calculation instead. 95/0.9 =105.5 95W processor at 90% Vcore efficiency (12V2) 2x12 = 24 (2) 3.5" hard drives 5x1.5 = 7.5 CDROM with no media in tray 5x1.5+12x1.5 = 25.5 Another CDROM with media in tray 50 = 50 Motherboard chipset + RAM, estimated 10 = 10 Power for USB peripherals 12x0.5 = 6 Power for fans from 12V rail -------------------- 228.5 Very rough estimate 475 - 228.5 = 246.5 What is left for the video card. Now, you can't use all of that, because it is virtually impossible to load a power supply in such a way as to extract the power limits from it. Usually, one of the power supply rails is loaded to the max, while the others are coasting. And that is why *everything* written on the power supply label is important. Xbitlabs measures video card power consumption, using specially equipped motherboards. They have current shunts inserted in the slot rails, to measure the current. In this example, a GTX 260 is about 112W in 3D mode. http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/vid...m_5.html#sect0 Their "details" graphic, shows how the power breaks down. A very small portion comes from slot 3.3V. Most comes from the various 12V sources. The bottom row of the table here, is a GTX 260 with a certain clock speed applied to it. http://www.xbitlabs.com/images/video...power_full.png So what you need, is a calculation that focuses on the 12V loading in the machine. In the pictures I could see of the machine, the power supply looks taller than a regular ATX. I can't tell from the pictures, whether the dimensions are abnormal in some way, or it is just the camera angles used. You can replace the supply with something else, if they use only standard connectors. If they've added some Dell specialties to their supply, then it'll take more info from enthusiasts who dissect such things, to decide what to do about it. ATX supplies are standard in width and height, but there have been some higher power supplies that are longer than normal. A long supply, coupled with an inflexible wire harness, can bump into the optical drive across from it. Post a picture of the supply label, and a list of the hardware inventory, for a more refined calculation. Paul |
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Best Nvidia Card for Gaming?
Tom Lake wrote:
I'm looking for the best Nvidia card for gaming given the constraint of a 475 Watt power supply. I have room in the Dell XPS 9000 case for a full-length, two slot card. I'm not adverse to installing a bigger power supply if the Dell uses standard connectors. Does anyone have any recommendations? Thanks for any advice you may give. Tom Lake You may not want to hear this but I got a ATI 5770 running in my sons PC with a 420W PSU. Supposed to be very efficient GPU. nVidia's aren't known lately for their power efficiency. -- Jethro[AGHL] aka Phat_Jethro Reply Email: jethro86 (at) gmail (dot) com |
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Best Nvidia Card for Gaming?
Phat_Jethro aka Jethro[AGHL] wrote:
Tom Lake wrote: I'm looking for the best Nvidia card for gaming given the constraint of a 475 Watt power supply. I have room in the Dell XPS 9000 case for a full-length, two slot card. I'm not adverse to installing a bigger power supply if the Dell uses standard connectors. Does anyone have any recommendations? Thanks for any advice you may give. Tom Lake You may not want to hear this but I got a ATI 5770 running in my sons PC with a 420W PSU. Supposed to be very efficient GPU. nVidia's aren't known lately for their power efficiency. The wonderful thing about their GPU, is the idle power. It still draws power when it is working hard. But the improvement in idle power is to be commended. It still means you need to match your power supply to the peak power draw of a card though. http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/vid...0_5.html#sect0 5770 idle 13.8W peak 61.2W http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/vid...0_5.html#sect0 5870 idle 14.7W peak 107W 5970 idle 43.2W peak 190.9W Planning for the latter one, you'd still need room for 191W of power, coming from some 12V rail (like 12V1) on your power supply. The 5970 has two PCI Express power connectors, to make room for that kind of power. http://www.xbitlabs.com/images/video...970_front2.jpg If I pick another card at random, like the Nvidia 9600 GT, the power there is http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/vid...s_7.html#sect0 9600GT idle 25.5W peak 59.7W and when you compare that to the 5770, you can see the improvement in the ratio between idle and peak. It means when you install a gaming card, and you aren't gaming, things run cooler. Other than that, it is the same old "battle of the gate counts". Part of the trick with ever-shrinking silicon geometry, is controlling the leakage current. A notable example, was the Prescott processor from Intel, where 25% of the power was squandered as leakage, doing no useful work. When Intel designed their latest processes, they've been more careful to add extra structures to control leakage. So some structures still waste power, but they're only used where needed. By mixing different kinds of solutions, the leakage current is coming down. If Nvidia uses the same fab as ATI, and pays as much attention to clock gating (which they're capable of doing), there is no reason they can't match that ratio. And it would still be in their best interest to do so, if they hope to fill data centers with GPGPU cards. Paul |
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Best Nvidia Card for Gaming?
= http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121353
ASUS ENGT240/DI/1GD3/A GeForce GT 240 1GB 128-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card A 256bit card is infinitely preferable to a 128bit card for gaming. This Galaxy GTS 250 512Mb is $99 after rebate. 1Gig of DDR3 on that GT240 is like a speedometer on a Yaris that goes to 200mph....it's not capable of running modern 3D titles at resolutions requiring that amount of memory. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-034-_-Product |
#8
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Best Nvidia Card for Gaming?
deimos wrote:
a 475 Watt power supply. I have room in the Dell XPS 9000 case for a full-length, two slot card. I'm not adverse to installing a bigger power supply if the Dell uses standard connectors. Does anyone have any recommendations? Thanks for any advice you may give. Tom Lake A GTX250 will both fit easily and doesn't consume more than a decent 400/450W can put out. Plus it has good all around performance and is readily available. Sorry, but I can't believe that's true. I own a 260 and I don't think that a 250 needs that much less than a 260 and the box of my card states that the absolute minimum required by NVidia's specs is 550W, while the card maker (XFX in my case) recommends 630W or greater. 680W or greater are required for SLI. While the card may work for a while with less than that, if you start playing games (or use other applications that make the card draw more power than when displaying the desktop) the safety fuse of your PSU may immediately cut the power at any time. I speak from experience. For reference a 250 is a slightly faster rebrand of the 9800GTX+, which was an overclocked process revision (55nm) of the previous 9800GT/GTX, which itself was the offspring of the 8800GT (G92b)... confusing yes. If you feel like upgrading to a decent PSU, like a Corsair 650W or so, you could easily run a GTX260 or 275, both of which are approx the same length as a 250 full length reference card. A good quality PSU of 550W or more is SLI capable as well, so basically it can run any single card config. 550 is hardly enough for a single 260 card. I recommend a good 700W PSU. Bye! |
#9
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Best Nvidia Card for Gaming?
Anonymous wrote:
deimos wrote: a 475 Watt power supply. I have room in the Dell XPS 9000 case for a full-length, two slot card. I'm not adverse to installing a bigger power supply if the Dell uses standard connectors. Does anyone have any recommendations? Thanks for any advice you may give. Tom Lake A GTX250 will both fit easily and doesn't consume more than a decent 400/450W can put out. Plus it has good all around performance and is readily available. Sorry, but I can't believe that's true. I own a 260 and I don't think that a 250 needs that much less than a 260 and the box of my card states that the absolute minimum required by NVidia's specs is 550W, while the card maker (XFX in my case) recommends 630W or greater. 680W or greater are required for SLI. While the card may work for a while with less than that, if you start playing games (or use other applications that make the card draw more power than when displaying the desktop) the safety fuse of your PSU may immediately cut the power at any time. I speak from experience. For reference a 250 is a slightly faster rebrand of the 9800GTX+, which was an overclocked process revision (55nm) of the previous 9800GT/GTX, which itself was the offspring of the 8800GT (G92b)... confusing yes. If you feel like upgrading to a decent PSU, like a Corsair 650W or so, you could easily run a GTX260 or 275, both of which are approx the same length as a 250 full length reference card. A good quality PSU of 550W or more is SLI capable as well, so basically it can run any single card config. 550 is hardly enough for a single 260 card. I recommend a good 700W PSU. Bye! You can get measured values for just the video card, suitable for doing a power budget. The 55nm GTX 260 is 112W at "3D max", and this is measured with multimeters and current shunts by Xbitlabs. That power will be coming from 12V1, so should be included as part of the 12V1 loading. Add 0.6A for hard drive, 1.5A for CDROM, 0.5A for fan headers, and ~9A for the GTX 260 55nm, gives 12.6 amps. http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/vid...m_5.html#sect0 The total power supply capacity, doesn't have to be real high. It's just a matter of adding the power for all the individual components. Allocate 50W for the motherboard chipset and the DIMMs, where the DIMMs can be on the order of 2W each now. (Kingston provides numbers in their downloadable datasheets for memory, when you need numbers.) The end result is, you should not need a 700W power supply. Naturally, any person buying a power supply, can pad or margin it all they want. If the load is 300W max by calculation, and you buy a 700W supply, there is no harm done. You've just spent more than was absolutely necessary. A little margin is a good idea, but more than doubling it isn't necessary. I could equally say, without doing any math at all, "get yourself a good 1200W supply", with a voice of authority. But instead, you can use math and work out exactly what you need. Then buy the power supply that provides a little margin and has a good reputation. That is worth more than having paid for an extra 5 pounds of unused power supply sitting inside your computer case. ******* One thing you should understand, is when a manufacturer gives power number, they assume the most power hungry processor has been installed in the system. For example, they might assume the computer has a 130W processor. Well, I use a 65W processor in mine, and the measured power consumption of my processor flat out, is 36W (measured with a clamp-on DC ammeter while Task Manager has the CPU graphs at 100%). You can see, how the manufacturer making an assumption for my benefit, has just backfired. Now I'm buying 100W more of power supply, than I really need. Also, there are a number of power supply estimator web pages available on the Internet. In all the cases I've evaluated, they're giving the wrong answer. A typical bad web site, works out a figure double what it should be. The gullible reader of the web site, then takes that figure and doubles it again, and goes shopping. How silly is that ? ******* To give another great story, I can tell you about something that happened at work. One of the staff in our lab, got a breathless phone call from shipping and receiving. "Come quick, there's this box down here, and you have to come and get it right away. You can't leave it here". The guy sounds scared. The warehouse is about a 10 minute drive from work. The person receiving the call, drives over for a look, because the person on the other end of the phone sounded worried, but didn't provide any details. Normally, they'd just deliver it to us. At the warehouse, in the middle of the floor, was a box about 3'x3'x3'. It has a large radioactive sticker on it. The shipping and receiving staff were so scared of it, they cleared a large area around it, removing anything even remotely close. The scene looks like ET just landed, in the middle of the floor. When the box was opened, there was a smaller box inside. It had a slightly smaller radioactive sticker on it. When that box was opened, there was yet a smaller box inside. It was plastered with radioactive stickers as well. When we finally got all the way into the box, there was a small radioisotope vial, the kind your teacher in high school might have used for an introduction to radioactivity. It might have had a microcurie of radioactivity, certainly nothing to strap on a lead apron for. What had happened, is each person in the supply chain, repackaged the shipment, putting a larger box around the outside "just to be safe". Until the box was huge, and the large radioactive sticker on the box, scared the **** out of people. I'm sure the people in shipping and receiving, who know nothing about radioactivity, thought they were going to die. The moral of the story is, if everyone pads the budget a little bit, the end result is blown out of proportion. And someone eventually has to look inside the box, for the truth. And math can help you find that truth. Paul |
#10
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Best Nvidia Card for Gaming?
"Anonymous" wrote in message
deimos wrote: [...] A GTX250 will both fit easily and doesn't consume more than a decent 400/450W can put out. Plus it has good all around performance and is readily available. Sorry, but I can't believe that's true. I own a 260 and I don't think that a 250 needs that much less than a 260 and the box of my card states that the absolute minimum required by NVidia's specs is 550W, while the card maker (XFX in my case) recommends 630W or greater. 680W or greater are required for SLI. Nvidia and its partners (ditto for ATI) routinely vastly overstate the PSU requirements for their cards. This is simple arse-covering to protect themselves from vexatious litigation from idiot consumers who do no homework before trying to run the latest high-end card on their budget Dell desktop. xbitlabs' reviews consistently show the actual measured power consumption of these cards is much lower than the manufacturers state, and enthusiasts take heed and feed those numbers into their calculations. |
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