Is my PC good enough to handle the GeForce GTX 970 with a power supply upgrade?

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msattam

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Mar 3, 2015
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Hello all,

So I'm looking into buying the GeForce GTX 970. However, I only have a 300W power supply right now and I know that needs an upgrade. I just wanted to ask a few things before I bought a higher wattage'd power supply and the GPU...

1.) The minimum wattage a PSU has to have for the GeForce GTX 970 to function is 500W. Would it make a greater impact on my gaming to go to 600W instead? Does this mean a bigger unit? I'd be willing to pay an extra 10 bucks if that was so.

2.) Would the GeForce GTX 970 work with my specs if I upgrade my PSU?

Here are my specs:
Processor AMD A10-5700 APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics
Manufacturer AMD
Speed 3.4 GHz
Number of Cores 4

Video Card AMD Radeon HD 7660D
Manufacturer ATI
Chipset AMD Radeon HD 7660D
Dedicated Memory 1.0 GB
Total Memory 4.0 GB

Memory 8 GB installed but only 7.43 GB usable

Operating System Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Edition Service Pack 1 (build 7601), 64-bit

Monitor I play on a 1920 x 1080 single monitor.

3.) Given those specs and if I add the GeForce GTX 970 and the higher wattage'd PSU, could I run a game well with these minimum and recommended specs?

Minimum:
CPU: Athlon II/Phenom II 2.8 GHz, Intel Core i3/i5 2.4GHz
CPU Speed: Info
RAM: 4 GB
OS: WINDOWS VISTA SP2 64-BIT (with KB971512 Update)
Video Card: ATI Radeon HD 5770 (1 GB), NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260
Free Disk Space: 60 GB

Recommended:
CPU: INTEL QUAD-CORE CPU, AMD SIX-CORE CPU
CPU Speed: Info
RAM: 8 GB
OS: WINDOWS 8 64-BIT (with KB971512 Update)
Video Card: AMD Radeon R9 290, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760
Free Disk Space: 60 GB

4.) Do you think the new PSU and the new GPU would fit in this computer? I haven't taken measurements yet but give me your rough estimate if it will or not (I don't know yet where everything goes so if you could tell me where each part will be I'd appreciate that as well).
mkcfbp.jpg


THANK YOU!
~Matt
 
Solution
Pr3di
1 - A bigger PSU (in Watts) will not give you more performance, but more safety.
I recommend a 550-600W from Tier 1 or 2 in this list: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1804779/power-supply-unit-tier-list.html

2 - Regarding your specs, you might have a slight CPU bottleneck, but based on the below link, the difference of a better CPU is not huge. This migh vary based on how CPU-intensive is the game you`re playing:
http://www.techspot.com/review/734-battlefield-4-benchmarks/page6.html

3 - Yes, you should be able to handle at least medium settings for a game with those requirements after the upgrade(the CPU might limit High or Ultra settings).

4. The GPU and CPU will fit, depending on the model. The GTX 970 G1 Gaming from...
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Pr3di

Pr3di

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Sep 18, 2013
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1 - A bigger PSU (in Watts) will not give you more performance, but more safety.
I recommend a 550-600W from Tier 1 or 2 in this list: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1804779/power-supply-unit-tier-list.html

2 - Regarding your specs, you might have a slight CPU bottleneck, but based on the below link, the difference of a better CPU is not huge. This migh vary based on how CPU-intensive is the game you`re playing:
http://www.techspot.com/review/734-battlefield-4-benchmarks/page6.html

3 - Yes, you should be able to handle at least medium settings for a game with those requirements after the upgrade(the CPU might limit High or Ultra settings).

4. The GPU and CPU will fit, depending on the model. The GTX 970 G1 Gaming from Gigabyte is my favourite, but it`s about 31cm long. If you measure your case and it will not fit, look towards MSI, Asus or EVGA versions - they are not as long.
 
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Solution
Pr3di

Pr3di

Honorable
Sep 18, 2013
2,141
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12,460
If you have the budget, I recommend you change the CPU + mobo for Intel and more power. If the budget is low, you can get a stronger AMD CPU (dopending on the mobo - you didn`t mention the model).

Bottlenecking is happening when both the CPU and GPU work together to give you framerates and all king of goodies in gaming performance.
But when one of them is overall weaker than the other, the stronger part (here the GPU) is bottlenecked.

Let`s say the GPU (here) is a F1 car, and the CPU is a bad road full of potholes. Even if you have the strongest car in the world, if you have a bad road, you will not be able to benefit of all the performance available.
 
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