Graphics card /powersupply confusion

[Larrjeet]

my PC is made up of a AMD phenom 9550 ,two sata harddrives, a firewire PCi card , a creative extreme music sound card and a diamond 3650 graphics card . I also have 2 sticks of DDR2 ram 4gigs total . My power supply is a sparkle atx 400pn . I am looking at upgrading my video card but am confused at the specs . according to the diamond site my current card only requires a 250 watt power supply but to step up to a 4650 it would require a 400 watt power supply and anything above that requires a 450 watt supply looking at the specs though it would appear that the 4600 series cards consume less power than my 3650 ? If I enter all my components into an online Power supply calculator though it shows that I should be able to run even a 4870 card with room to spare ? Also when I compare the 3650 to the 4650 the the 3650 has a higher clock speed and it also has a higher memory band width rating 80 gigs per second as compared to 8 gigs per second . Will I notice much difference between the 3650 and the 4650 ?

 

[invisik]

Companies overate there cards with power requirement. I was told i need minimum of 600w to run 2 gtx260 sli but they run fine on a 500w. A 4870 would run okay on that psu but your cutting it close. The 3650 to a 4650 isn't a big jump only a minor improvement, so its not worth it. What is your budget for a new card? and what resolution do you play at?

 

[Larrjeet]

Companies overate there cards with power requirement. I was told i need minimum of 600w to run 2 gtx260 sli but they run fine on a 500w. A 4870 would run okay on that psu but your cutting it close. The 3650 to a 4650 isn't a big jump only a minor improvement, so its not worth it. What is your budget for a new card? and what resolution do you play at?

Probably no more than a hundred and fifty I Run flightsims and Xplane, FSX and also games shuch as BIOSHOCK this card runs Xplane at 25-30 fsp textures set to extreme and everything else set to default but would love to run other settings higher .

Also noted your TRS 80 terminal I had TRS80 dumb terminal once and used it to run packet radio!!

 

[invisik]

A 4850 should be fine. FSX isnt to depended on the graphic card but rather on the cpu, so i would try to overclock your cpu as much as possible.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127414