BFG ES 800w enough for crossfire 6970s?

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Jared701

[H]ard|Gawd
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May 9, 2002
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Sorry if this is a dumb question.

I have an Asus P5Q-E mb with 8 gigs of ram, 2 hds, 1 dvd rom and numerous fans. I'm wondering if this power supply should be able to handle the draw from 2 6970s in crossfire also? I bought this around 2 years ago and from the little research I just did it seems like it should be able to but wanted to double check with people who have much more knowledge of power supplies than myself. (I realize that running crossfire on this board would be putting the pci express at 8x each and I'm going to research that before buying. Right now I just want to make sure that the power supply is enough)
 
What is your CPU? Is it overclocked? Will you OC the 6970 cards?

If you plan on OC'ing the hell out of everything maybe not. If its all at stock you are probably fine.
 
Ultima99 said:
What is your CPU? Is it overclocked? Will you OC the 6970 cards?

If you plan on OC'ing the hell out of everything maybe not. If its all at stock you are probably fine.
Click to expand...

Q9550 @ 3.65. I either did not bump the voltage or barely did (was 2 years ago) I do not plan to overclock the videocards at all.
 
As others said, you should be fine.

An important factor to me with a PS is warranty, and since you have BFG and they went out of business... the lifetime warranty is obviously not worth dick any more so you might want to snag a 750+ watt backup if you have the extra flow to do so
 
Dylan80 said:
As others said, you should be fine.

An important factor to me with a PS is warranty, and since you have BFG and they went out of business... the lifetime warranty is obviously not worth dick any more so you might want to snag a 750+ watt backup if you have the extra flow to do so
Click to expand...

I didn't know they went out of business... also didn't remember what kind of warranty the card had though. What are some good things to look out for if the power supply isn't giving the system enough power/or is about to die? I've heard slow performance and crashing but don't know for sure what other symptoms may be. I'll just keep it for now and plan to do a full system upgrade in like 2 years so hopefully it will work that long for me. I have a laptop and could go without my desktop for a few days worst case scenario.
 
If you don't intend to overclock the 6970's, then it seems you may as well buy 6950's.

You could unlock the 6950's (will most likely work) and clock them to stock 6970 clocks (6970 bios (or modded 6950 bios), clocks, shaders = identical card at that point), or simply unlock the shaders but leave the card at lower clock speeds if you run into a power wall.

You should be fine either way, but I love it when cards unlock... I bought the Radeon 9500 non-pro for this reason (to get a 9700 out of it). And hell... my old motherboard is an Asus P5e flashed to Rampage Formula, heh.
 
Archmage said:
If you don't intend to overclock the 6970's, then it seems you may as well buy 6950's.

You could unlock the 6950's (will most likely work) and clock them to stock 6970 clocks (6970 bios (or modded 6950 bios), clocks, shaders = identical card at that point), or simply unlock the shaders but leave the card at lower clock speeds if you run into a power wall.

You should be fine either way, but I love it when cards unlock... I bought the Radeon 9500 non-pro for this reason (to get a 9700 out of it). And hell... my old motherboard is an Asus P5e flashed to Rampage Formula, heh.
Click to expand...

I considered that and even clicked to buy a 6950 from newegg but then read about people having stability issues/games crashing. For the cost of the upgrade I am doing (bought 3x monitors for eyefinity and thinking of getting 2 new videocards) I'd rather know for a fact it will work and not take chances. I know the 6950 has dual firmwares but still worry if the card died after you flashed it to a 6970 then they may say you had no warranty at that point and you are sol. I may consider light overclocking of the cards but wanted to guarantee they worked at 6970 speeds so went with this instead. Already have one on the way so switching now isn't really an issue since I don't plan to send it back. I'm going to check my performance in games with one before deciding if I should get another for an eyefinity resolution.
 
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