Required Juice?

[t33lo]

I have an OCZ Powerstream 600W PSU. Does this thing have enough Amperage on its 12V rails to run a EVGA GTX 260 Core 216 SSC Edition 896MB 448-bit GDDR3 or even a EVGA 9800 GTX+ 512MB 256-bit GDDR3? I notice that the minimum requirements for both cards is....

GTX 260: Minimum of a 500 Watt power supply. (Minimum recommended power supply with +12 Volt current rating of 36 Amp Amps.)
9800GTX+: Minimum of a 450 Watt power supply. (Minimum recommended power supply with +12 Volt current rating of 24 Amp Amps.)

I guess I'm confused in that my PSU on the specs page states that it has....

OCZ Powerstream 600W: +3.3V@28A, +5V@46A, +12V1@20A, +12V2@18A, -5V@0.5A, -12V@0.5A, +5VSB@2.0A

What is the +12V2? Does this have a combined 38A?
I have a relatively old system that I'd like to keep for another year or so so I don't really want to upgrade the PSU if the GTX 260 will not be compatible. My specs are as follows:

AMD 3700+ 2.2GHz
DFI LanParty SLI-DR (supports 64-bit)
Nvidia BFG 7800 GTX
Crucial Ballistix 2x512
Crucial Ballistix Tracer 2x512
74GB WD Raptor
320GB WD
600W PSU

Thanks!

 

[ConnorBearse]

I know the 9800 GTX+ will do fine on a 600wat PSU, and i am 99.99% sure that the GTX 260 will work.

I used a 9800 GTX+ on my system using an intel duo 2 core (2.8ghz) with a 580PSU.

So you should be good to go.

 

[coozie7]

You have linked to a 520 Watt supply.
I think it has enough for either card, OCZ are one of the better brands but the CPU will savagely limit either card you have listed.
For the system you have given, a HD4670 or 9600GT would be a better match.

 

[t33lo]

Coozie, I changed the link to the 600W version, sorry about that.

You have linked to a 520 Watt supply.
I think it has enough for either card, OCZ are one of the better brands but the CPU will savagely limit either card you have listed.
For the system you have given, a HD4670 or 9600GT would be a better match.

When you say a better match, do you mean that my current rig will be bottlenecking any of those two cards? My main reason is to buy this card to go with my update to Mobo, ram, cpu etc about a year from now. I mainly play CS:Source so I guess either the 9800GTX+ or the GTX 260 would be overkill but would either be bottnecked if I were to play some of the newer higher end games of today?

 

[coozie7]

@ t33lo: It happens, mate. I deal with it

A year is a long time in computer terms. I would suggest getting either a HD4670 or 9600GT and putting the money saved into a bank account for the upgrade next year.

 

[t33lo]

@ t33lo: It happens, mate. I deal with it

A year is a long time in computer terms. I would suggest getting either a HD4670 or 9600GT and putting the money saved into a bank account for the upgrade next year.

Yeah good point, I probably won't be able to utilize at least the GTX 260 with my current rig since I am probably only going to play CS:S but that depends on the whole bottlenecking issue in my previous post. Will that happen and how much so?

 

[coozie7]

Either card will be savagely bottlenecked, as I said, in fact, I suspect the 7800 is being held back if you are having problems with CS:S.
FYI on my rig CS:S :1920x1200, 4XAA, 8XAF, all settings to max, one core on my CPU disabled: 92 FPS on the stress test. And I have a 256Mb 7800GTX as well!
The point I am trying to make is you will see no improvement with a faster card, yours is as fast as the CPU can currently handle.
Save your money for a more useful CPU/MB/RAM upgrade, those cards will still be around later, but much cheaper

 

[t33lo]

Either card will be savagely bottlenecked, as I said, in fact, I suspect the 7800 is being held back if you are having problems with CS:S.
FYI on my rig CS:S :1920x1200, 4XAA, 8XAF, all settings to max, one core on my CPU disabled: 92 FPS on the stress test. And I have a 256Mb 7800GTX as well!
The point I am trying to make is you will see no improvement with a faster card, yours is as fast as the CPU can currently handle.
Save your money for a more useful CPU/MB/RAM upgrade, those cards will still be around later, but much cheaper

I don't think there is any bottlenecking going on with my current system. I average 109fps during the CSS stress test with every setting on high including supersampling, 8xs and 16x AF. Although I do have my BFG 7800GTX overclocked like crazy 515/1330 on stock cooler. Temps never exceeed 80C either. I'm very impressed with this card. But I do agree that getting a new card might not be worth it since there will probably be bottlenecking with it. Almost exactly 4 years ago, I bought top of the line parts for my computer and my goal was to have it last 4-6 years. Thats why I'm being stubborn and don't want to upgrade for another year. The only thing I have to do now is try to overclock the cpu (done it in the past) but I have 4 sticks of 2 different types of ram with different timings so I don't know how easy that will be. Is it possible?

 

[coozie7]

The different timings will make things a little more complicated and TBH I have only played with overclocking myself, so my knowlage is very limited.
Try posting on the overclocking forum and check back here, maybe another poster will be more helpful.
I think your stubbornness will pay dividends when you do decide to upgrade. By next year we'll have DX11 cards in volume, stable drivers and Win7 should have had most of the bugs knocked out of it as well.
Nice OC on the card BTW

 

[t33lo]

The different timings will make things a little more complicated and TBH I have only played with overclocking myself, so my knowlage is very limited.
Try posting on the overclocking forum and check back here, maybe another poster will be more helpful.
I think your stubbornness will pay dividends when you do decide to upgrade. By next year we'll have DX11 cards in volume, stable drivers and Win7 should have had most of the bugs knocked out of it as well.
Nice OC on the card BTW

Thx Coozie,

I have been messing around with the settings in BIOS and was able to get 235Mhz x 11 at 2.5-3-3-8 2T with my vcore at 1.44V, VDIMM at 2.9V and Chipset at 1.6V. I was able to run superpi at 8M without any problems. I know 8M iterations isn't that good, but seems to be stable enough for playing my low end games like css. My only problem is that I fail memtest at 30 secs in even if I set all of my bios settings back to default without any overclocking. I am currently asking this question in another thread if its my motherboard that is eating my memory since i have been going through about 4 pairs in the last 4 years. I don't get it.