High-end GPU with 300W PSU?

[Adrian98765]

My question is...I bought a GeForce 8800GT 1GB who was high-end back in 2008..and everybody knows that it has a 6-pin power connector. I can run it on my 300W PSU? Does anyone had this card with 300W or anything similar? I want to play games but to not affect anything inside because some said 300W it's too low others said 300W is fine

 

[Hellfire13]

NVIDIA specifies 400w as the minimum requirement for that unit. I wont go below that limit for safe operations. Also that card is way too old and obsolete to give you any kind of performance in recent games.

 

[Herc08]

Well we need to know the rest of your specs...however, that is definitely not a high-end card. Also, NVIDIA recommends a 400w PSU, also it needs 6-pin & 8-pin connector. Honestly, I don't think it's worth it. However, it should be just fine with your build, but still need to know the specs.


I would have went for a GTX 1050 2GB which draws power from the motherboard and is under $100.

 

[Barty1884]

An 8800GT is around 100W max load (and playing anything remotely modern will likely be at or near max).

300W *might* do it, but depends on the balance of your spec, and the quality of the PSU.

"Officially" it called for 26A on the 12V rail... I believe, so minimum 312W PSU..... you're very close to that, and the requirements are somewhat inflated to account for the sheer abundance of poor quality PSUs on the market.

If your PSU is poor quality, or is dated, you might struggle.


Even a GTX 1030 should outperform that card, and cards like a GTX 1050 or RX460 should still fall into 'affordable' territory for most.

 

[dontlistentome]

That's generally a 125W videocard. So take your CPU wattage, let's say it was 65W, and add it to your card wattage. In this example it would be 125+65=190W. So out of your 300W of power, you'd need MINIMUM 190 of it to be on the 12V output AND you'd need a 6 pin connector to be on that power supply. So if that 300W has a 12V output rated at lower than "16A" it's unsuitable.

Now, you don't want to run a power supply at 100% load, more like 75% at most. So in reality you'd want to see "20A" or more on the 12V output in order to use this power supply. That's if your CPU only uses 65W.

 

[DRagor]

I used to run 8800gt on two rail unit (14 A and 16 A, so more or less 350 W unit) without problem, but 300 W might not be enough.

 

[sizzling]

300w is meaningless, we need make and model of PSU. A crap unit might actually be closer 200w or less.

 

[shrapnel_indie]

Yup, the lowly GTX-1050 is quite a few "groupings" above even the 8800 Ultra... that means even a Rx-460 could trounce the 8800GT in games. Since we don't have any professional reviews on the 1030, at least yet.

 

[cryoburner]

Yup, the lowly GTX-1050 is quite a few "groupings" above even the 8800 Ultra... that means even a Rx-460 could trounce the 8800GT in games. Since we don't have any professional reviews on the 1030, at least yet.

Well, there are user benchmarks to give us some kind of idea of the amount of performance to expect...

http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GeForce-8800-GT-vs-Nvidia-GT-1030/m7722vsm283726

The GT 1030's performance is below that of an RX 550, but either of them should be significantly faster than an 8800 GT, while only requiring a fraction of the power. Or we can compare something like a 1050 Ti, which is even faster, while still requiring significantly less power...

http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GeForce-8800-GT-vs-Nvidia-GTX-1050-Ti/m7722vs3649

That 8800 GT also only has 1GB of video memory, which is likely to be a problem with many newer games that expect at least 2GB. It's also only a DX10 card, while many games require DX11 hardware now. It could work reasonably well for older games, assuming your PSU can power it, but for recent big games you would want something newer.

 

[Adrian98765]

I live in Romania, here PC parts are expensive and salaries are very low compared to other countries. I'm not expecting to play new games, just older DirectX 10 games. Here with a medium salary you can't even think about getting a GTX 1050. Why is everything expensive here, I don't know.

But anyway, I'm using a Core 2 Duo E7500 2.93GHz with a 2GB DDR2-800MHz RAM (until August I'll add 2 more gigs). the PSU is a Lite-On PS-5301-08HF which came stock with the system. Should I trust that Lite-On with the 8800GT?

 

[Hellfire13]

Wow...oh boy. If that is the case, i guess you have to. Dont know what else to say, other than, you can look in the used parts market for better hardware at relatively cheaper price.