HD 3650 agp on 250W PSU?

eilif

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Okay, i found a great deal on the Sapphire Radeon HD 3650 512mb. I just ordered it, without thinking much.
I made sure it fit, it is supposed to be able to fit an AGP 4x slot, and everything should be compatible.
BUT
I didn't find much about it running on a 250W PSU.
And i'm quite concerned, as the card require an external power-connector. :(
It says on their web-page that it requires 300W.

I have a 250W PSU from Astec, and it is very old. It came stock with my computer, and I actually believe that it is about 10 Years old. (i'm just having fun with an old system to see if it can run the latest games when i'm finished)

So here are the problems:
- The card requires 300W + an external power connector.
- My PSU is 250W, 10 years old (must have degraded) and only has 10-11 amps on the +12V rail.

So.. Am i going to be able to run this card? :bounce:
In worst case, what will happen if the card needs more power?
Will i ruin my computer?
Will i just have frequent crashes and such?
Will my PSU be blown out?

It doesnt cost much for a new PSU though, but i'd prefer not having to buy a new one, but should 350W with 14A on the +12V1 rail and 16A on the +12V2 work with this card? :p

Oh, and let's ignore all the problems for a while. :sarcastic:
Let's just pretend that everything works.
Will i be able to run CoD4, Crysis, DaO and some other games on decent settings?

My system:
Pentium 4 Northwood 2.8 GHz ( No HT)
1.5 GB of RAM
70GB HDD
250W PSU
HD 3650 512mb (currently a GeForce 6200)
Windows XP Home

Thanks for reading :)
 

eilif

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Well all i want is to be able to run these games, i actually don't care if i have to use lowest settings.
I can already run CoD4 with 130FPS if i tweak the game, but the tweaks aren't allowed in public servers :(
I get about 20-40 FPS on normal servers, but they are not playable, a lot of lag spikes and stuff.
Basically what i want to run is:
DaO (runs with 15-30FPS already)
CoD4 (20-40 FPS already)
CoD2 ( 60-120 FPS Already)
Oblivion ( 20-40 FPS, playable)
STALKER on Medium settings (20-60 FPS )

And some other games.
So you see, that is what i'm able to with my GeForce 6200 512 MB, wich is absolutely obsolete.
I'm just looking for maybe a 20FPS increase! Then most games will be playable.
I've already upgraded from a 2 GHz P4 to a 2.8 GHz P4 but my 6200 is still a HUGE bottleneck.
But will 2 GB of RAM instead of 1,5 GB be noticable?
I run Windows XP wich isnt that RAM hungry as 7 or Vista.
 

eilif

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I am quite sure that i will be getting more RAM, yes, but for now i'm only thinking about PSU's and GPU's :)
I now run a Crucial PC2700 DDR-DIMM 1GB CL2.5 6ns along with a 512MB Chip. If i bought another one, would i notice any performance increase?
Do i have to worry about that double-sided stuff? ( can't seem to remember what it's called)
Will 2,5 Gb (2x1 GB + 1x512mb) of RAM be slower than 2 GB (2x1GB)?
 

according to this:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card-radeon-hd-6990-geforce-gtx-590,2912-7.html
the 3650 is about 6 tiers higher than the 6200, so you should see some fairly substantial gains in FPS, However, at some point your CPU will start to bottle neck you.

When it comes to RAM, I kind of figure that more slow ram is better than less fast ram. The more ram you have, the less your system will go to the swap file on disk. Since ram is an order of magnitude faster than disk memory, it should improve your performance.
 

eilif

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Well i got another 256 MB of RAM lying around. But i only got 3 slots though. (wtf?)
But when i run 3dmark03, i got a few points MORE *without* that last 256 MB chip.