will my psu be sufficient?

aznofazns

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 14, 2008
Messages
273
HP a6000n:
2.2ghz Athlon 64 X2 4200+
2x1gb DDR2 667
320gb 7200rpm HDD
Integrated Geforce 6150SE
Stock 300W PSU with 19A on the 12V rail

Will I be able to install an HD 4670 with no overclocking? If not, what's the best gfx card that will work safely, has an HDMI port, and costs under $70?
 
as far as i know 4670 requires a 400 watt power supply and a minimum of 22 amps in 12 volt rails.
 
Stock 300W PSU with 19A on the 12V rail

Will I be able to install an HD 4670 with no overclocking? If not, what's the best gfx card that will work safely, has an HDMI port, and costs under $70?

Depends. Who is the manufacturer of that 300W PSU? If it's a decent manufacturer, possibly but little to no headroom. If it isn't, the HD4350 is probably the cheapest and lowest power GPU that I would recommend using.
 
In my post ,there are more posibilities, the HD4550 is lowest,cheap and fine GPU

4550_power.png


Bye bye:):):)
 
If it's a decent quality power supply, you should be OK, but no guarantees. Your CPU pulls approx 150W under load according to this AnandTech article (90nm dual core results).

Unfortunately, you've got an HP case, so it's likely to not be decent quality ... a quick google search on a600n 4200 psu reveals quite a few people asking this same question.

If you're only doing lowish-level gaming (or none at all), I second the recommendation of the HD4550. It's what I've got in my HTPC, and it plays Guild Wars @ 1280x720 @ 4xMSAA @ consistent 60FPS. You could also go for the HD4350, which is a bit cheaper, bit slower, and uses a bit less power.
 
I think the quoted 150W power consumption from the article is for the entire system though, not just the 4200+. I also read a review of the HD 4670 that showed maximum system power consumption at load playing Crysis to be 218 watts, and that was with a QX9770, Raptor HDD, 4gb DDR3, and 790i SLI mobo. So is a 4670 really out of the question or is it just cutting it close?
 
Who's the manufacturer of the PSU and what model? That will tell a lot about whether it's really going to deliver anything close to 300W clean. With a good quality PSU it'll be close but should still work... with a lesser quality PSU and adding an HD4670 you may be on the way to a long, drawn out troubleshooting session.
 
I think the quoted 150W power consumption from the article is for the entire system though, not just the 4200+. I also read a review of the HD 4670 that showed maximum system power consumption at load playing Crysis to be 218 watts, and that was with a QX9770, Raptor HDD, 4gb DDR3, and 790i SLI mobo. So is a 4670 really out of the question or is it just cutting it close?
my HP comp with a 5000 X2 and 4670 used around 170-175 watts at the wall during gaming. btw I used the same HP oem psu that the op has.
 
That's exactly what i needed to hear, thanks. Also, which brand of 4670 do you have and how long is it? I measured the maximum length that would fit into the PCI-e slot to be around 6 inches.
 
That's exactly what i needed to hear, thanks. Also, which brand of 4670 do you have and how long is it? I measured the maximum length that would fit into the PCI-e slot to be around 6 inches.
well I had an ASUS 4670 and it was shorter than the 8600gt it replaced. I dont know if I would recommend using that psu with a 4670 for long term. I was just testing it out and was about to build my own pc plus I was disappointed to see just how bad even a wimpy 4670 could be held back by a 5000 X2 in some games. how old is your pc and do you have the 65nm or 90nm version of the 4200 X2. you can use cpu-z to find out if you dont know.
 
I'm not on that p.o.s. HP right now so I'm not sure if it's 65nm or 90nm. But either way, how badly does your 5000+ hold you back? If it's really that much of a bottleneck, my 4200+ will be way worse, at which point I'd might as well get an HD 4550. All I really need in the end is to power Vista Aero at 1920x1080 and be able to watch some HD movies and play some games (Crysis not included).
 
I'm not on that p.o.s. HP right now so I'm not sure if it's 65nm or 90nm. But either way, how badly does your 5000+ hold you back? If it's really that much of a bottleneck, my 4200+ will be way worse, at which point I'd might as well get an HD 4550. All I really need in the end is to power Vista Aero at 1920x1080 and be able to watch some HD movies and play some games (Crysis not included).
well you will be going from onboard video to that 4670 so it will be a massive jump overall. I was going from an 8600gt to a 4670 and with a 5000 X2 and playing at low res I just didnt get that big of a change especially in minimum framerates. how old is your PC? if its around a year or so old then that 4200 will likely be 90nm. if its fairly new then it could be a 65nm 4200 which uses much less power.
 
I think the quoted 150W power consumption from the article is for the entire system though, not just the 4200+.

On re-reading, looks like you're right - my initial thought was that your entire system would be using about 150W, but I revised that when I saw those figures. I should have stuck with my gut ...

Given that, an HD4670 should be fine even if your PSU is only pushing 200W (and as the other poster above stated, he was OK with the 5000+ and 4670). Although you'll be severely bottlenecked by your CPU for most games, I think you're better off spending the bit extra to get the 4670 - there's a very large performance improvement over the 4550, which you will realise when you eventually replace the rest of your system. Plus you may be able to turn up the detail levels higher even on your current system.
 
Could well be - my initial thought was that your entire system would be using about 150W, but I revised that when I saw those figures. Maybe I should have stuck with my gut ...
yeah if thats a 90nm 4200 X2 cpu then he should be around 165-170 watts for full system during gaming with a 4670.
 
I bought the PC refurb almost a year ago so I'm pretty sure it's 90nm, but either way the total system power consumption right now should be at most 150W with only one HDD, so adding a 4670 that uses about 50W max shouldn't kill the PSU unless it just really really sucks.
 
D'oh - you guys replied while I was editing my post ...

I suppose I should trot out my anecdote of running an HD4870 completely stably under load on a 5-year-old Antec 300W SmartPower PSU with a 15A 12V rail ... of course, the CPU was only a Sempron64 3000+, so considerably less power-hungry than what you've got.
 
I bought the PC refurb almost a year ago so I'm pretty sure it's 90nm, but either way the total system power consumption right now should be at most 150W with only one HDD, so adding a 4670 that uses about 50W max shouldn't kill the PSU unless it just really really sucks.
well those psus will last for a while with the stock config but running another 50-60 watts through it might be more than it can handle. also the psu is already over a year old so its even less likely to deliver its advertised power. its a risk so its up to you.
 
D'oh - you guys replied while I was editing my post ...

I suppose I should trot out my anecdote of running an HD4870 completely stably under load on a 5-year-old Antec 300W SmartPower PSU with a 15A 12V rail ... of course, the CPU was only a Sempron64 3000+, so considerably less power-hungry than what you've got.
may I ask why you would put the 4870 with a sempron 3000 and 300watt psu?
 
That's what i want to know... pairing a sempron with a 4870 is probably the equivalent of pairing a sempron with a 3850 in terms of performance. Anyways, I've still got to decide if a video card is really justifiable right now since I just plopped $240 bucks on a monitor and $65 more on a 2nd hard drive. I just wanted to make sure the 4670 was a possibility ahead of time.
 
may I ask why you would put the 4870 with a sempron 3000 and 300watt psu?

Absolutely - a co-worker was having trouble with his new machine, and we wanted to determine the problematic component, so I took his HD4870 home and tested it in my spare machine (the Sempron) and lent him a spare card (X1800GTO) to try out in the rest of his system.

I almost swapped out the PSU for a 430W before testing it, but decided to try it with the 300W just for a lark. I didn't even expect the machine to POST, but it did, then successfully booted into Windows, then ran through 3DMark06 at the highest settings I could, played Guild Wars at maximum settings ... I was totally astounded. I also suspect I wasn't pushing the card anywhere near its limits ...

Needless to say, the problem wasn't with the video card - turned out to be an incompatibility between his motherboard and his factory-overclocked RAM.
 
Absolutely - a co-worker was having trouble with his new machine, and we wanted to determine the problematic component, so I took his HD4870 home and tested it in my spare machine (the Sempron) and lent him a spare card (X1800GTO) to try out in the rest of his system.

I almost swapped out the PSU for a 430W before testing it, but decided to try it with the 300W just for a lark. I didn't even expect the machine to POST, but it did, then successfully booted into Windows, then ran through 3DMark06 at the highest settings I could, played Guild Wars at maximum settings ... I was totally astounded. I also suspect I wasn't pushing the card anywhere near its limits ...

Needless to say, the problem wasn't with the video card - turned out to be an incompatibility between his motherboard and his factory-overclocked RAM.
well at least you had a logical explanation. :cool:
 
Man if I had spare quality components lying around I'd build myself a second rig just for kicks... but first I need to get a laptop and a second HD 4870... :p One is just not quite cutting it for Crysis/Crysis Warhead on Very High at 1680x1050. Plus, I feel like I'm wasting my 620 watts of Corsair goodness...
 
That's what i want to know... pairing a sempron with a 4870 is probably the equivalent of pairing a sempron with a 3850 in terms of performance.

I think you're overestimating the power of the Sempron ... I doubt that I got much more performance out of the HD4870 than it would get from the X1800GTO (which is slightly faster than an HD4550 for most purposes).

Anyways, I've still got to decide if a video card is really justifiable right now since I just plopped $240 bucks on a monitor and $65 more on a 2nd hard drive. I just wanted to make sure the 4670 was a possibility ahead of time.

Hmm - I presume you got an LCD with a DVI port. Your motherboard almost certainly doesn't have DVI on-board, and the older nVidia cards/chipsets don't send a particularly good signal over the VGA (tends to look bad when converted back to digital). Also, you can't do fixed-aspect scaling over the VGA - you need DVI for that (important if you play older games that only support 4:3 resolutions). So if you don't have DVI on your motherboard (and you bought an LCD) you will probably get a much better picture by going to a discrete graphics card.
 
Man if I had spare quality components lying around I'd build myself a second rig just for kicks...

It's my "experimental" machine - built out of parts that are left over from people's upgrades. It's currently serving as my test HTPC i.e. before upgrading software on my HTPC I test it out on this machine to make sure the upgrade will go smoothly (of course, I also image my HTPC's hard drive before doing anything major). The X1800GTO is from my last upgrade (to a 9600GT).
 
Well that's actually the MAIN reason I'm considering a discrete video card. I guess I didn't make that clear earlier. VGA is just not cooperating with my 1080p monitor. I had to install custom Nvidia drivers, change the refresh rate to 70Hz, and move the entire picture down by 4 pixels just to get the damn picture to display correctly (or near correctly). My monitor (ViewSonic VX2433wm) has an HDMI port as well, so that's another requirement for a new video card.
 
Man if I had spare quality components lying around I'd build myself a second rig just for kicks... but first I need to get a laptop and a second HD 4870... :p One is just not quite cutting it for Crysis/Crysis Warhead on Very High at 1680x1050. Plus, I feel like I'm wasting my 620 watts of Corsair goodness...
play in DX9. I run Warhead in DX9 enthusiast(very high) settings just fine at 1920x1080 with a gtx260. of course with the regular Crysis you will need to run a custom config to get very high settings in DX9.
 
I would but I'm a sucker for eye-candy. Besides, there wasn't a huge difference between DX9 and DX10 performance anyways (I'm running both XP and 7). I just hate it when the framerate drops below 25 in some parts of the game with big explosions and bodies and debris flying everywhere.

Also, you have a GTX260 which > HD 4870 at Crysis.
 
I would but I'm a sucker for eye-candy. Besides, there wasn't a huge difference between DX9 and DX10 performance anyways (I'm running both XP and 7). I just hate it when the framerate drops below 25 in some parts of the game with big explosions and bodies and debris flying everywhere.

Also, you have a GTX260 which > HD 4870 at Crysis.
well I have the 192sp gtx260 so its about dead even or sometimes slower than a 4870 in Crysis. Clear Sky is what I am wanting to upgrade my video card for. its not even close to playable on my gtx260 at 1920 with DX10 max settings.
 
Is Clear Sky really that GPU-intensive?

MINIMAL

* Microsoft® Windows® 2000(SP4)/XP/Vista (SP1)
* Intel Pentium 4 2.0 Ghz / AMD XP 2200+
* 512 MB RAM
* 10 GB free hard disc space
* 128 MB DirectX® 8.0 compatible card / nVIDIA® GeForce™ 5700 / ATI Radeon® 9600
* Keyboard, Mouse
* LAN / Internet for Multiplayer

RECOMMENDED

* Microsoft® Windows® XP/Vista (SP1)
* Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 / AMD 64 X2 4200+
* 1.5 GB RAM
* 10 GB free hard disc space
* 256 MB DirectX® 9.0c compatible card / nVIDIA® GeForce™ 8800 GT / ATI Radeon® HD 2900 XT
* Keyboard, Mouse
* LAN / Internet for Multiplayer

The minimum requirements are a joke. They probably tested it at 640x480 res. It's also funny how they still use the HD 2900 XT as something to go by these days. That card was shitty and short-lived and nobody needs to be reminded of it...

Wow this thread is so off topic now, but hey I'm the OP so it doesn't matter.
 
Is Clear Sky really that GPU-intensive?

MINIMAL

* Microsoft® Windows® 2000(SP4)/XP/Vista (SP1)
* Intel Pentium 4 2.0 Ghz / AMD XP 2200+
* 512 MB RAM
* 10 GB free hard disc space
* 128 MB DirectX® 8.0 compatible card / nVIDIA® GeForce™ 5700 / ATI Radeon® 9600
* Keyboard, Mouse
* LAN / Internet for Multiplayer

RECOMMENDED

* Microsoft® Windows® XP/Vista (SP1)
* Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 / AMD 64 X2 4200+
* 1.5 GB RAM
* 10 GB free hard disc space
* 256 MB DirectX® 9.0c compatible card / nVIDIA® GeForce™ 8800 GT / ATI Radeon® HD 2900 XT
* Keyboard, Mouse
* LAN / Internet for Multiplayer

The minimum requirements are a joke. They probably tested it at 640x480 res. It's also funny how they still use the HD 2900 XT as something to go by these days. That card was shitty and short-lived and nobody needs to be reminded of it...

Wow this thread is so off topic now, but hey I'm the OP so it doesn't matter.
that doesnt mean poop. I get way less than 20 fps with wet surfaces, sunrays and smoke turned up even with no AA.

"To achieve a playable speed in this game we disabled FSAA and such resource-consuming options as Sun rays, Wet surfaces and Volumetric Smoke."

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/gainward-hd4850-1024mb-gs_9.html#sect1
 
Wow that seems ridiculously close to Crysis performance... and that's with some effects disabled.
 
i remember when i found out my compaq p3 tower didnt' have a card that allowed me to play video games. oh boy :D

i was a n00b back then ;)
 
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