7970 power consumption

Chad11491

Honorable
Dec 20, 2012
7
0
10,510
Hey all. I just got an XFX 7970 for a steal, and have a question about its power draw.

I have a corsair CX 500 that was the minimum recommended for the card by XFX. It runs fine, a huge bump in playability from the 560ti . However, I want to overclock this thing to GHz edition stock clocks, and I can do so, but the games hang after about 2-3 minutes of gameplay at around 1050/1475. Lower clocks than that run fine. I think it's my power supply not having enough extra juice to go to the graphics card that is making it freeze, as I get no error messages, the games ( BF3, Skyrim, Sleeping Dogs, FC3) just hang. No distortion, artifacts, weird colors or anything you'd normally get from pushing a card too far. Leading me to believe I need a beefier power supply.

Thoughts?
 
Two thoughts on this...
1st you might not have a successful oc...i.e. to say a stable clock.try testing its stability.
2nd your psu is not able to deliver enough power.get at least a 600w 80+ bronze certified psu.

edit:http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp