need low power video card

whats he upgrading the video card for. this info would give me a much better idea on an upgrade path for him
 
you need to provide some actual information here. what games is he trying to play as "steam games" tells us nothing really. and what are the exact specs of the pc including what the label for the psu says? this is likely an oem pc but I have never heard of a 280 watt psu for any of them.
 
no real point in suggesting anything until we know what we are working with. and really even a 7750 would not be suitable with an old worn out cheap 280 watt psu. its not like a psu provides anywhere near that much power on the 12v even when new. plus this could be a Pentium 4 pc with 512mb of vram for all we know.
 
Radeon 5450 (enough for films)=20W at full load. Radeon 6450 for light gaming, draws maybe 5-8W more.

Radeon 6570 DDR3 (enough for medium gaming). If i remember correctly, on paper it should draw about 40W. The GDDR5 version draws more. The rig in my sig, draws 200W at full load measured with kill-a-watt and includes 1 SSD and 2 HDD. Which is the same it was drawing when i had the 5450 oddly enough. Maybe HIS did a good job on making it to draw less power or because it a "passive" model, i don't know, fact it, i didn't see with the kill-a-watt the difference with the 5450 i had before.

Your friend can't have it all though. And it's bad idea to have the PSU running at its limits.
 
again just because its a 280 watt psu does NOT mean he has anywhere near that to work with. even most oem 300 watt psu are only rated for 15-18 amps and can only make about 11-13 amps at realistic conditions even when new. an old 280 watt psu probably does not even have but 9-10 amps to work with after years of use.

so like I mentioned, there is no real point in suggesting anything until we get some actual info.
 
I was looking at this myself the other day and was kicking myself for missing the $8AR sale on black friday for the 5450

this is a good chart, though a year old, at least the prices will be low now on these cards:
rdw_cdr_power.png


Note that ATI (amd) now has a feature called overdrive which underclocks the card and raises it on demand like speedstepping for intel.

Or maybe a 6450 which has been as low as $12AR recently.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top