Will my PSU be powerful enough?

[TGWTHF]

ok so i made this system a couple of months ago, but i've been using my old GTS 250 512mb graphics card in it, and i'm hoping to upgrade to a AMD Radeon HD 6950 2GB in the next couple of months, i'd buy the new gen, but the 6950 has a higher core clock than the 7870, and its cheaper.

ANYWAY my main question is will my PSU be strong enough to run this card wiht the rest of my system?, these are my PCs specs, with the PSU listed first

PSU: 550Watt XFX ProSeries PSU 80+
CPU: intel I5 3570k
RAM: 16GBs corsair vengeance 1600mhz
MB: MSI Z77
HDD: 1TB seagate
fans: 4 120MMs and 1 220MM one little one has LEDs

would it be strong enough to power these AND the 6950 2GB?...

 

[Silvune]

Yes your current PSU is more than enough for a system with a 6950.

A higher core clock is not really a justifiable reason to choose a 6950 over a 7870, as they have different 'architectures'. Cheaper price is a good reason though.

 

[Raiddinn]

XFX 550w can handle a 6950.

I second what Silvune said about the core clock as well.

I would find a review where the two are benchmarked together and then see how each perform in the same environment and then compare that with the price charged for each of them.

Here is an example http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/510?vs=548

As you can see there the 7870 surpasses the 6950 in pretty much every way including having lower heat than the 6950.

The 7870 will, however, be a small amount noisier than the 6950. Many times the 7870 has a 50% advantage over the 6950 and sometimes its advantage is more than 100% (over 2x as good).

Look at numbers like those and see which ones are most applicable to you and then see whether the extra price is worth the extra benefit with what you will be doing.

 

[TGWTHF]

XFX 550w can handle a 6950.

I second what Silvune said about the core clock as well.

I would find a review where the two are benchmarked together and then see how each perform in the same environment and then compare that with the price charged for each of them.

Here is an example http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/510?vs=548

As you can see there the 7870 surpasses the 6950 in pretty much every way including having lower heat than the 6950.

The 7870 will, however, be a small amount noisier than the 6950. Many times the 7870 has a 50% advantage over the 6950 and sometimes its advantage is more than 100% (over 2x as good).

Look at numbers like those and see which ones are most applicable to you and then see whether the extra price is worth the extra benefit with what you will be doing.

I understand that, but my thoughts are, is it worth an extra £50 just for 30FPS extra at the most? ((because i'd rather get the duel fans than the single fans because they run cooler....)) and i have been told that the 2GB versions of the 6950 can be upped to a 6970?... not sure how much truth there is in that, or if its all the 2gb ones...

 

[Raiddinn]

Not sure whether it is worth 50 GBP for you to get 30 more FPS. I would say it is kinda relative.

If your FPS is 0, then most definitely. If your FPS is 200, then probably not.

It is the middle ground you have to worry about. The farther away your FPS gets from 0, the less worth it the expense becomes.

There is quite a noticeable difference going from 30 to 60, and essentially none going from 60 to 90.

My HD 6950 powers Devil May Cry 4 at like 300 - 1000 FPS, so it certainly wouldn't be worth doing for me to improve in that one specific game.

The 6950 isn't a bad choice in any event. There are some 6950s out there that can be unlocked to 6970s, but I wouldn't expect it to be all of them.

What happens is that the manufacturer makes a whole bunch of cards of the best sort and picks out the ones that are flawed and starts disabling things on them. That brings their hardware specs down to the next lower category.

Often there is enough demand for the next lower card that they will disable something that is working in order to sell it as one of the more in demand lower cards. Those are the ones that are unlockable to the better sort.

If you happen to get one of the kind that isn't flawed, then you got randomly lucky. There is no guarantee for that sort of thing.

 

[TGWTHF]

Not sure whether it is worth 50 GBP for you to get 30 more FPS. I would say it is kinda relative.

If your FPS is 0, then most definitely. If your FPS is 200, then probably not.

It is the middle ground you have to worry about. The farther away your FPS gets from 0, the less worth it the expense becomes.

There is quite a noticeable difference going from 30 to 60, and essentially none going from 60 to 90.

My HD 6950 powers Devil May Cry 4 at like 300 - 1000 FPS, so it certainly wouldn't be worth doing for me to improve in that one specific game.

The 6950 isn't a bad choice in any event. There are some 6950s out there that can be unlocked to 6970s, but I wouldn't expect it to be all of them.

What happens is that the manufacturer makes a whole bunch of cards of the best sort and picks out the ones that are flawed and starts disabling things on them. That brings their hardware specs down to the next lower category.

Often there is enough demand for the next lower card that they will disable something that is working in order to sell it as one of the more in demand lower cards. Those are the ones that are unlockable to the better sort.

If you happen to get one of the kind that isn't flawed, then you got randomly lucky. There is no guarantee for that sort of thing.

well on that link you sent me, the biggest difference is 125fps to 150fps, lowest fps on both is in crisis warhead at 16.2 on the 7870 and 18.9 on the 6950
im mostly only gonna be using it to make letsplay vids, and i mostly play on 1440x900 resolution lol, so i dont think either card will give me much more of an improvement over the other, and over my current card? anything is an improvement thats new lol

also do you think its worth getting double fan over a single fan card? especially when i got a 220mm fan thats constantly on right next to the graphics card? lol if its not worth it i might get the single fan 7870, if it is im going with the 6950

and i see, i learned something more, if i get the 6950, i'll hope fo rone thats been locked XD, and if not, eh...,

 

[samuelspark]

You could get a 7850. That's still better than the 6950. Maybe the GTX 660?

 

[Raiddinn]

Well, more fans are almost always better than fewer fans.

Not sure what program you are going to be using to record with, but FRAPS puts a pretty heavy tax on the PC, so if the games you are going to make videos of are also kinda high end it might help to have the more powerful card.

In the end I doubt it will make much of a difference.

 

[samuelspark]

For Fraps, get a separate HDD to record to. Reduces all lag from FRAPS.

 

[TGWTHF]

to both of you, i use Bandicam, it doesn't lag at all and it has ok quality on its videos, when i used fraps the audio was all out of sinc and laggy as hell.... so... i wont be using fraps lol, and i know about the harddrive thing haha, I already have one specifically for recording to