So here's my question.  I'm a computer tech by trade, done a lot of building, unfortunately I'm  short on cash at the moment.  I do have some money, but don't want to overspend.  Also my power supply is just a cheap one, 550 watt, but 24 amps on the 12v+ rail.  I am stuck on wanting a new video card with the tax rebates coming in and all.  I'm pretty well set that I either want a superclocked 8800 gs or a 9600 gt.  As those seem to be the best price for the performance you get.  Currently I'm running an AMD Athlon x2 5200+, 2 gb of ddr 667, IDE dvd burner, and 320 gb seagate sata hard drive, as well as a couple of case fans.  
 
In your opinion, would this power supply handle those 2 cards?  Or which one would it be more likely to handle?  My gut says the 9600gt.  What do you guys think?  Keep in mind if you recommend a new PSU I'm on a budget.  

Just a quick question, what made you skimp out on the PSU in the first place? You'll need to upgrade it for either of those cards (you MIGHT be able to get by for a while, but why take the chance of losing your whole system? It would be inevitable..). Get a nice, cheap Antec Earthwatts 380w. It should be able to handle both cards nicely. Maybe put the "old' PSU in an older PC? My 2 cents.

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E6300@3.2ghz 1.32v  |  Gigabyte P35-DS3R 1.0
4x1GB C5@900Mhz    |  8800GT

Actually to be honest, it was a Christmas present.  Started a new job a few months back, still catching up on some bills, so as long as it was good enough, that was ok.  I'm still running a 7300LE if that tells you anything though...lol.  Oh forgot to mention, I do have an add in NIC.  But I've been thinking about a budget PSU.  
 
Quick question, anyone know what the 9600 gso will be priced at?  I know they are supposed to be a rebranded 8800gs and that the superclocked edtions of those should rival performance of a 9600gt if it's benchmarks look like the 8800gs.  But the gs and gt are so close in price now, I wonder where the gso will sit price wise.    

I dont remember wher i readit(i think vrzone), but the they are gonna be priced 120 to 130 dollars i beleive.

 
I'd go with that. They're £80 here in the Uk, and US prices tend to be 60 - 70% of ours for mid range cards like that.
 
http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx?quicklinx=535S

The Evga website lists 8800GS as requiring 400watt and +12v of 22amps and the 9600GT requiring 400watt and +12v of 26amps.
Scroll down in the Specifications window to see the PSU requirements.
http://www.evga.com/products/moreI [...] P3-N853-AR

Why do people always fall for what the Video card resellers and Nvidea say ? Read the hardware reviews where complete systems with 8800 gtxs are only pulling around 280 at full load....this being measured with a killa-watt meter usually, and most of the time these cards themselves use under 150 watts...
 
don't just buy into what they say about needing some stupidly spec'd power supply, there are more than enough reviews on this site to shoot that full of holes !

you can run the 8800GTX under 450W, so don't worry about the 8800gs

http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 611-7.html
 
http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 672-5.html
 
http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/ [...] nic/4.html
 
of course you want some breathing room on your ps and it has to have enough amps on the rails, but the manufacturers vastly overstate the requirements.
 

Breathing room for what?   The requirements for what?  The reality is that the manufacturers give advice based on "near worst case scenarios" and not for the majority of average systems.  That's because they know that there will always be the 5-10% of people that cram as much hi-tech, power hungry, high status or "bling" items into systems as they can. And even the average system owners aren't very comfortable in hearing recommendations that a lowly 305w budget PSU is more than enough for their "brand new modern powerful computer".  It's not so hard to load up a high end PC system so the actual power requirements come close the what the MFGRs recommend. I think you can cut the MFGRs a little slack.  

As for "people always falling for what the Video card resellers and Nvidea say" it's not exactly accurate.  
You pointed out that information about actual power consumption is out there, in those links for example, and on websites like The Truth About Graphics Power Requirements.  

Breathing room because you never want to run your PS at max load, and the systems I was looking at included a high end 1st gen 8800 card and multiple drives.  
 
Manufactures need to have a note that says *normal* computer only, if your a benchmark/sli whore with 500 drives then you need the atomic pile from lost planet ...

In my mind there is no difference in your saying "of course you want
some breathing room on your ps" and the MFGRs suggesting a PSU they
know is larger than required probably because they know some people will have
loaded systems and some will be interested in OC'ing, etc.

What is a *normal* computer?  You'd get different answers from the web surfer, gaming enthusiast or multimedia mogul.
In the real world a "normal computer" is more often something like a Dell with a 300w PSU from Delta Electronics.  We don't see many of those recommended around here for people building their own systems.
THG forum visitors usually have higher expectations, both from browsing the forums and reading the THG articles.

How would a MFGR know how much "breathing room" to recommend?  And how would they explain that to the average person?
How will the MFGRs know which persons will OC the CPU and GPU?  

I'm a lot more comfortable with the MFGRs approach than your suggestion which I still don't quite understand how it would work.

Just to say, Delta powersupplys aren't that bad. They just aren't for enthusiasts. Plus I don't even know if you can privately buy them.

Fine but let's say you have a "normal" or more correct AVERAGE computer with an optical drive and one or 2 harddrives. MOST people have this setup and are not tech savy; makes more sense to me to list that as a requirement, because JOE tech already knows how much crap he has in his system and knows that probably is low, whereas john q public who goes to best buy to pick up this awesome new card his buddy has, now goes out and buys "at least a 550 watt power supply"...hmmmm,  better to have a little extra says the sales kid, so he ends up buying a 650 or 700 when he doesn't really need it with his couple of drives. Of course it doesn't hurt, but did he really need to spend all that money, probably not.  
 
Now us tech savy folks know better to look up the requirements at least even if they are off a bit, so we know that all this is bs for a few drives and a single card.
 
Believe it or not, the vast MAJORITY of the market has 1 hd and 1 dvd, not raid 0, not 2 optical drives, or q6600's.

Technically as long as you take a 6-pin to 2 molex adapter and plug them up on 2 completely separate rails it should works fine. I've only got 14 amps flowing through my 12v rails and It gives me what I need. The only downside to this is you need 2 completely dedicated 12v rails to this card. These cards need 26amps so 14+14=28 for me. So that mean I've got 1amp left over on both rails. nothing runs hot or overloads with this setup seeing as I have been running it since chrima' and everything is still stable....