X1950 Pro power requirements

J

jubs

Weaksauce
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Jul 3, 2003
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HI, I have a MicroATX case with and Antec 300W PS. I want to get a X1950 Pro. My CPU is a AMD 3000+ and 1GIG DDR ram, do you think I will need to upgrade my PS to run this card? I don't plan on overclocking anything. Thanks, John.
 
jubs said:
HI, I have a MicroATX case with and Antec 300W PS. I want to get a X1950 Pro. My CPU is a AMD 3000+ and 1GIG DDR ram, do you think I will need to upgrade my PS to run this card? I don't plan on overclocking anything. Thanks, John.
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yes

you will need atleast a 450watt good quality psu
 
and you might want to check the sapphire forums on the amp requirements. Seems this card is a hungry little thang... wants lots and lots of amps...

if in no mood to go there.. check the many threads here..
 
I have a x1950pro and it recommends a 450w psu with 30a on the 12v, i had a 500w fortron bluestorm with only 24a combined on the 12v and my system was rebooting while playing games so i got a corsair 620hx and all is good now. Keep in mind if you have a multiple rail psu that you can't simply add the amps on each rail together and thats your total.
 
depends what all else you have in your system. There are some power supply calculators out there that you can use. The other way to do it is to get the "official" current draw ratings of your parts and add it all up manually. We've done a similar method for server rooms at work to judge the cooling capacity required.

I've got a P4 3.0 oc'd to 3.45Ghz, 1gb ddr400 (4 sticks), 4hdd's, 2 optical drives, 6600GT AGP, fusion hdtv5 gold, HDA Mystique, 4 usb powered devices, and a VFD display all running off a 350w psu. So if you have less components with higher efficiency (I could be wrong, but I think an A64 running stock uses a lot less power than an oc'd P4 (s478)).
That's my htpc, and is only stressed a few hours a day.

dunno how that compares to an a64 3000+ and a x1950pro though. prolly similar power draw if you have less drives and add-in cards.
 
If your system is pcie you will have less power requirements because the card will be able to pull up to 75 watts from the motherboard. AGP can only pull less then 12 from the motherboard (and 3.3 volt line).
 
hellblazer said:
If your system is pcie you will have less power requirements because the card will be able to pull up to 75 watts from the motherboard. AGP can only pull less then 12 from the motherboard (and 3.3 volt line).
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???? ...just because it's PCI-E and not AGP doesn't necessarily mean it will have less power requirements. PCI-E may provide up to 75w from the board....but that power has to come from the power supply anyway. So weather the card gets the power from the motherboard or a power adapter...it's still sucking that 75w (or whatever power it consumes) from the psu.
 
I installed PCI-E 1950pro for a friend with 350W Nexus (fortron manufactured) PSU and its working great. Though I would recomend something bit more beefy around 400-500W range for that card.
 
I have an Allied 500w psu with 22amps on the 12v and I can tell the x1950pro I just got is giving my psu hell.

The x1950pro is very hungry and I would assume that any psu that it's hooked to that does not put out alot amps on the 12v will end up staying underload and would burn out eventually.

I actually rerouted all my wires and made sure the fans got there 12v and the videocard go its own and the fans are sharing with my hdd and dvdrom.

I would suggest not using the x1950pro with any psu that does not have at least 18-22amps on the 12v.
 
NEVERLIFT said:
I have an Allied 500w psu with 22amps on the 12v and I can tell the x1950pro I just got is giving my psu hell.
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so how can you tell that it is "giving [your] psu hell'? is there any sort of software or anything where you can know how many amps are being drawn from the different voltages? i guess i'd mostly be interested in the 12V line...

of course on the face of it, my power supply specs are woefully deficient:
Total Max Output: 295W
Total Max on 12V line: 209W
3.3V - 13A
5.0V - 28A
12V - 17A
-12V - .2A
but i read online that computer power supply specs are really flaky.

i'd really rather just somehow make sure using operational testing that the power supply can supply whatever power is needed to my system:
P4 3.0GHz, 2GB
250GB HD, 750GB HD
DVD-RW, CD-RW, floppy
ATI HDTV Wonder, USB Fusion HDTV5, plus some Sony Hardware Analog TV Tuner
HIS Iceq3 x1950 Pro AGP 512MB

i have to assume that the 2 most significant drains on the power supply are the processor and that video card right? so is there any sort of software that systematically increases the load on both of those components until the computer crashes or reboots or something? or if it never crashes i guess i'd be happy sticking with the power supply i already have.

if not, is there any sort of game with enough different setting for me to systematically up the settings until something went wrong? or would 3dMark be good for that?

thus far, i've really had no problems with the card. but i think that may be because the computer is mostly for watching hdtv, and my last video card actually died, so i figured i'd get the lastest and greatest AGP card. i do like the AVIVO of course. last card didn't have that. however, now that i have this card, it'd be nice to try to be a gamer. :) what would you say would be the most grueling game for a graphics card to deal with, just for the purposes of taxing it and seeing if the power supply can keep up, disregarding whether anyone actually likes playing the game or not?

thanks!
 
For your specs YOU DO NOT NEED MORE THEN 300watt.
Your using a micro motherbaord too which isnt power hungry and guessing from that you only have 1 harddrive and 1 cdrom? And your not overclocking.

Dont listen to these power hungry people. Your fine. Conserve your electricity and your wallet.
 
[CaM]Spoon;1030716370 said:
For your specs YOU DO NOT NEED MORE THEN 300watt.
Your using a micro motherbaord too which isnt power hungry and guessing from that you only have 1 harddrive and 1 cdrom? And your not overclocking.

Dont listen to these power hungry people. Your fine. Conserve your electricity and your wallet.
Click to expand...

sorry, maybe i should have typed it more clearly:
1 DVD-RW burner drive
1 CD-RW burner drive
1 250 GB Hard Drive
1 750 GB Hard Drive

but yeah, not into overclocking here. especially now, since i think my processor was most taxed by the real-time video encoding done be Orb video streaming, but maybe now with my AVIVO card, the gpu might help out with that.

how did you figure out that my motherboard is a "micro motherboard"? it really doesn't look extra small or anything i don't think. it's some sony proprietary board made by Asus called P4SD-VX.

anyway, thanks for the encouragement to stick with the smaller power supply. that is my plan, until i am somehow able to stress the computer out to the point of rebooting or blue screening. i was reading in a different thread that that is the actual symptom of underpowering the video card/system.
 
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