Can an AMD radeon HD 6850 run on a 350W Power supply

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A quality ~450w power supply like the Corsair 430CX or the Antec mentioned above will run an HD 6850 just fine. I would not try it on a 350w PSU though.

Shouldn't you at least go with a 500-550W PSU? The written minimum power supply for the 6850 is 500w.
Click to expand...

That is based on a "generic" quality unit. AMD and Nvidia have to assume you have a low quality model in their recommendations. As long as you have a decent unit then this chart is very good.

http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/Page362.htm
 
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That all depends on the rest of the system. The 12 volt power on each power supply is different as well.

The 6850 is a worst a 130 watt give or take card. It should not need massive amounts of power.

The AMD site tends to aim high because you run into many 450-500 watt power supplies with less power(on the 12 volt rail) than a quality 300 watt unit.

As an example the 5770 lists a 450 watt power supply(from AMD), but it runs fine on a quality 300 watt unit(assuming the rest of the system is not too power hungry.). With a low powered system, I could not push the 5770 system over 180 watts at the wall for a FULL system.

The Antec unit is solid for the price.
 
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PEOPLE you are confusing the HELL out of me. Some people say I need up to 450w for the GPU others say that 350w is fine. WHAT DO IT DO! Can someone find a site that can detect the GPU on my computer and tell me what power supply I need. It's just confusing if two people are telling me two different things.
 
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read the label on the 6850 box, it should say either 450w or 500w psu required wth 6 pin pcie connector. i doubt a 350w psu would have that connector, let alone enough votage on the 12v rail to power it. A 450w good quality psu is what i would recommend. depending on the rest of your components and how much power they use, if its an i3 you would be able to get away with a smaller PSU than if you had an 8 core bulldozer.
 
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To make it simple and less confusing, just go with what AMD wants.

I do not think it is a BAD card, but never tried BF3 on one.

I was simply trying to state that overall wattage can be misleading as many 500 watt power supplies from cheaper(or older) brands have most of the power(thats wattage and not voltage) on the 3.3 and 5 volt rails. These are not the heavy loaded rails on modern systems.

So 500 watts is not always 500 useful watts(this is why one can not just say. Hey I have 350 watts, can i run <insert card name here>, you may have 300 watts(25A) @ 12 volts or 180watts(15A) @ 12 volts). Quality should ALWAYS be the number on thing to look at in a power supply.
 
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Just follow the link in my above post. RealhardtechX maintains the most comprehensive power supply database on the internet along with that very handy chart I linked you to. Power requirements for every single and combination of cards you can run.

In summary if you have a quality, name brand power supply then something in the 400-450w range is fine. If you have a generic low quality unit you would need to follow the 500w guidelines from AMD. As I stated above AMD and Nvidia have to assume you have a low quality model in their recommendations.
 
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