500W Psu For Radeon Hd 4890?

[spectrum]

Pretty much what it says in the title, looking for a new graphics card, budget is not great as my only income is pocket money at the moment, so looking at high end older series cards. Its between the HD4890 and the HD4870 really, the ATi website says minimum power supply for the 4890 is 500w, the minimum for the 4870 is 450w, my power supply is exactly 500w, so I don't whether it would be pushing it a bit if I got the 4890.

 

[spectrum]

Doesn't matter now i've bought one anyway with the mindset of if it doesn't work I can always resell it with very little loss on ebay.

 

[Tech-Frog]

Really depends on the rest of your components, the CPU is quite the watt muncher.

 

[spectrum]

Yeah I thought that, what I don't get is the minimum of 500w, is that taking into account other hardware or is that power dedicated to the GPU alone?

Other hardware - Athlon II X2 250 3.01Ghz
- 2Gb RAM
- ASRock Motherboard of some sort
- Not sure if its important, 250gb Seagate HDD

 

[JoshuaA]

AFAIK it's a general guideline as an absolute minimum, you'll know when your PSU packs in whether you got it wrong or not.

Never buy a cheap PSU though, I learn't the hard way and it instantly fried my motherboard.

 

[JoshuaA]

I just ordered a HD6850 to run on a 650w PSU, that I have concerns about but I've designed my PC around possible crossfire in the future. Treating myself before christmas .

 

[raptorrex]

Doesn't matter now i've bought one anyway with the mindset of if it doesn't work I can always resell it with very little loss on ebay.

dont worry. 500w is the wattage needed to power the card, and all other items in the PC. its not a minimum it will run with.

 

[spectrum]

Well the card arrived the other day and its brilliant, well worth the £63 including PnP, so far no problems at all and its not nearly as noisy as I was expecting I can run Just Cause 2 and Fallout: New Vegas on the highest settings. Crysis next