ATI 4670 Power Requirements

[halomademeapc]

Hi, I recently got stuck with a 6-year-old HP Media Centre PC. It runs a Pentium D, but my parents won't let me upgrade the mobo or anything, so it looks like I'm stuck with that. However, after showing them how easy it was to pop a WiFi card into one of the open PCI slots and telling them that it was exactly like that except it goes in the PCIe slot right above it, it seems more in the cards that I can get a graphics card to use instead of that awful GMA945. I was looking at the Radeon HD 4670, but AMD says that it needs at least 400W PSU. I've heard of some people getting it to work on lower wattages, so I wanted to see if I would be fine.

I have
a 300W psu
a Pentium D 820 (95W, IIRC)
a DVD burner
a DVD reader
a 250GB 7200rpm HDD
a Conexant Falcon II TV Tuner
a Generic Wifi PCI card
a Modem (not like I use it)
an Asus P5LP-LE Motherboard

Do you think that I will be able to get by installing the card w/o a new psu? If not, please link me to some low-budget PSUs that would do the job, or a lower-power GPU (Needs to work with PCIe 1.0)

I do all of my buying from Amazon.

Stuff I need the GPU for:
Run Windows Media Centre (Windows 7) at 1280x1024 or 1600x900 without lag
Team Fortress 2 (doesn't need to be pretty or hi-res, just needs to work at at least 25fps)
HD video playback at least 720p
Sonic Adventure DX
Sonic Heroes
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire


My needs might change. As you can see, most of those aren't too demanding because I'm used to working with two pieces of crap: the GMA945 in the desktop or the Radeon Express 1250 in the laptop.

 

[halomademeapc]

can't use 5670 or 6670, the P5LP-LE is PCIe v1, so I can only go up to PCIe 2.0 cards if I understand correctly

 

[halomademeapc]

I'm actually not entirely sure how to tell, so here's a pic of the card area of my PC:

 

[halomademeapc]

Well, I want to keep it close to $60, just so my parents don't think I'm wasting money. I have about $15 in my amazon account, so that brings it up to $75, I guess. I don't need a whole lot, though, as I mentioned earlier.

If I have to lose a PCI card, I'll just move the WiFi chip to where the modem is, I don't use that anyways.

 

[halomademeapc]

the Radeon HD 5xxx series will work with PCIe v1.0?

 

[halomademeapc]

Yeah, I looked at the specs on that, and I'm pretty much sold. The power consumption looks great, and the performance looks awesome for the price. DX11 might be nice, too. gonna see if I can get it, and according to nvidia, 300W psu is safe, so thanks for all the help!

 

[halomademeapc]

Best answer selected by halomademeapc.

 

[halomademeapc]

Just ordered the card today, along with enough RAM to get this six-year-old machine up to 4GB @400MHz and a USB capture card since windows 7 x64 doesn't like the composite inputs on mine. I found out that the PC had never been cleaned and fixed that, so now it doesn't pump hot air out into my room and is relatively quiet. Anyways, thanks for all of your help and recommendations; I'm looking forward to getting my dual screens back.

AND MINECRAFT 1.8 ADVENTURE UPDATE. YES. JUST YES.

 

[halomademeapc]

both graphics categories shoot up to 6.9 from 2.5-ish (windows experience index). Aero no longer lags, I can use my media center PC as a media center, and I can run TF2 and minecraft. 😀

I'll run some real benchmarks (I have 05-06 and the most recent futuremark stuff) when I have some spare time.