ASUS AMD RADEON HD7770 on Intel DG965WH mobo

For one.....that power supply is about 50 watts short of what they require! and i am running that card with a older system and it sure increased things like frame rates by at least 100% in my games......if i can help you any more let me know.
Crash43

Thanks for replying, Crash43. From what I've read, the actual power consumption of this card is fairly low, at least compared to some others in its class. I saw the 450 W recommendation and was curious as to whether a 400W would be adequate, considering the lower consumption of the card.

I'm also concerned that my mobo may not support this card. My PCI-E slot is probably 1.0 and this is a 3.0 card. I've heard that PCI-E is backwards compatible but did want some confirmation on that. I was also thinking about the GeForce GTS-450. Not as good a card, but it would likely meet our family's needs...plus it says it only requires a 400W PSU.

The 7xxx wont work well on PCI-e 1.0, so i suggest you or to buy another card or change the mobo.

Your PCI-e is still probably 2.0. What is your motherboard make, easy to find out that way.

It's an Intel DG965WH. The manual I have does not specify which PCI-E version it is. Neither does anything I can find on Intel's website concerning this board. For that reason, I think it must be 1.0

Doesn't matter. As long as its atleast a 1.0 slot at 16x you won't see a difference until you get into the higher end cards (such as a 7870/7950) even then its negligible. On certain chipsets you might run into a problem running a 2.1 card on a 1.0 slot but thats only because of the way 2.1 was implemented. It required an update and that was it. Some motherboard manufacturers simply did not want to do this and so it was incompatible. Though I think 3.0 is completely fine. I haven't heard of it not working.

(Though for the 1.0/2.1 issue I am talking old mobos, I had this issue on a G41 chipset that ran on the 775 socket with a Celeron D, so..)

About the PSU you might be fine I don't trust startech seeing as how I have NEVER heard that brand name before. If you are really doubtful you could step it down toa 7750 which only takes 75w and requires no external power aside from the PCI-E slot. Though the 7750/7770 are fairly close in price most of the time and usually worth going for the 7770.

That said I think the issues with 2.1 are fairly chipset dependent from what I have been reading.

Is 1.0, it wont work well, unless youre very lucky.

Where did you hear this? I would really like to read up on this issue.

Direct experience, sapphire assistance and feedbacks from other forum, just now the assistance wrote me: "Also on PCI-E 1.1 motherboard, may has compatibility problem"

Off topic question. Is gtx 650 better for old mobos with pcie 1.0?

Well I know that is completely false. I have never seen/experienced/heard of anyone ever having a problem with a 1.1 slot as far as compatibility is concerned. Only issues I know of is 1.0 to 2.1  

I have seen a post about compatibility issues for hd 7750 and 7770 with pcie 1 and 1.1. They say that amd rushed the pcie 3.0 configuration and was not backwards compatible. I have seen people saying that zero core cause the pc to not to wake up after sleep and would require a restart. I also have an old mobo and planning on getting a new vc for power consumption reasons.

To the ts, your psu might not power the card. A system with HD 7770 would average 200-250 watts depending on your pc. If you oc and number of hardrives, fans and everything. You have a old psu and its only rated 400 watts, it may not provide 400 watts now. Assuming its giving 300 watts making your psu at almost full load when you play.

In what terms? If you are thinking their is a performance difference when going from 1.0 to 3.0 there really isn't much of one and thats only on the higher end cards... By the time you get to a GPU that would be bottlenecked by an older PCI-E standard you CPU would be the bigger bottleneck. I hope thats legible...

Heres a good article about these things: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5458/the-radeon-hd-7970-r...



Ah I've heard about that zero core issue aswell. I think it was fixed by a bios update though. (not entirely sure)