Widescreen Gaming Forum

hi all

i`m hoping you guys can help me out
i would like to upgrade from a 8800gtx to a gtx275
i have the following specs:

intel core 2 quad Q6600 2.4ghz
MSI P35 Neo-FI
Antec Sonata III Atx Case 500Watt Earthwatts
Western digital 320 gig SATA II
GEIL 2x2048 DDR2 800 Ultra dual channel
Asus 8800GTX 768mb Ddr3

with only one hd and one dvd drive i`m guessing i can run a gtx275 with my 500watts psu

auestions ism there`s so many companies making gtx275`s out there
asus, evga, pov etc etc
which one should i go for?

also i heard about bottlenecking ur system if ur not too carefull
could my system run a gtx275 u think without probs?

thx for ur info

I have a Asus GTX 275. Can't compare to other (i've heard it's quite loud compared to others), but im happy with it.

It's not that loud btw. Idle you can't even here it. Ingame, well, i wouldn't know. Sound of gunfire or afterburners is to loud to hear. But really, i haven't noticed anything strangly loud with it.

As in speeds etc, i have no idea. Some manufacturers OC their cards i think? I think the asus one is the most basic one you can get.

well... unless it's an overclocked or special cooler model all brands are equals on the product side.

though companies like EVGA for example provide much better customer services, then it really depends on what YOU want ;)

edit: for Triple Head 5040x1050 I would choose a higher than 1GB memory just to be on the safe side. It's not a big change but any load of textures from cache to gfx memory will result in small stutters as shown in some WSGF reviews http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/wiki/index.php/WS_and_WTH_Benchmarking_%28GTX_275%29 (look out far cry 2 detailed analysis)
then it depends if you want a near "perfect" experience or not

I'd stick with eVGA unless I could get one from some other manufacturer significantly cheaper...

Except for the overclocked ones or custom designed ones, all nVidia cards no matter the brand are the same.

well with the above spes i used to run evrything on max without stutter
but since i am the owner now of a th2go didital i experience stutter but not with all games

i read some fora i would`t even be able to run a gtx285 or 295 with my specs, psu wise only that would cause probs

i do want to avoid upgrading anything else but my graphics card

so i was gunning for the 275
what do u think?

nVidia's site states 550w PSU minimum for the GTX275.

While a good PSU means you have a little leeway with it... I'd tend to err on the side of caution. If it doesn't work or you have stability problems... it'd probably be the PSU not being up to it.

nVidia's site states 550w PSU minimum for the GTX275.

While a good PSU means you have a little leeway with it... I'd tend to err on the side of caution. If it doesn't work or you have stability problems... it'd probably be the PSU not being up to it.

but i could give it a try first right?
seeing as there aren`t many other power slurping elements to my setup

nVidia's site states 550w PSU minimum for the GTX275.

While a good PSU means you have a little leeway with it... I'd tend to err on the side of caution. If it doesn't work or you have stability problems... it'd probably be the PSU not being up to it.

@2air
there' no problem with a 500W PSU at all
as long as the PSU is a good one (which means it's backed by good reviews)

in this article : http://www.behardware.com/articles/670-1/pc-s-actual-power-consumption.html
you can see how consumption is often overrated (still as long as the PSU is a good one as said before)
even though the article is a little old with a little research you can update for more recent configurations : http://www.behardware.com/articles/755-4/report-radeon-hd-4890-vs-geforce-gtx-275.html

and bear in mind that these values are taken at the plug which means actual consumption is lower (if we target for a 80% efficiency that means that for example, with a whole config with GTX275, MAX actual consumption of 446 at the plug is more around 350W which then means that you got 150W left before the "limit")


edit: your antec 500W earthwatt is enough according to the reviews I read
it's 80+ and it seems there's no particular problem with it. you might want to know that it's actually made by "seasonic" which is known for the reliability of his power supplies. Not the best PSUs out there, but still quite good all around.

I say you'll be very fine as long as you don't overclock.

that's some great intel :)

thanks alot!
i think i will go with the 275

thx again

but i could give it a try first right?
seeing as there aren`t many other power slurping elements to my setup

It's certainly worth a try, yes. :)

PSUs are strange beasts... or the manufacturers are... some (usually the cheap 'n' nasty ones) are massively overrated - which means that they can't provide the power they say they can, and frequently provide power outside of the ATX specifications or fail entirely at an inopportune time. Antec PSUs, however, are widely considered to be well made. PSUs by good-name manufacturers (PC Power and Cooling, most OCZs, Corsair, Enermax, Antec, Coolermaster, most Silverstones, FSP...) are very well made and can cope with exactly what they say on the tin. Sometimes they're even underrated (I believe PC P&C used to do this - they'd have a PSU rated at 510w that was more realistically a 650w PSU...)

Just for point of interest, I'm running a 4870X2 (power hog of extreme levels) and a Core i7 @ 3.8GHz on a 620w Corsair PSU. Even fully loading both CPU and GPU barely makes the PSU sweat. Still, if you do have problems, it's probably the PSU. (I was running a HiPer PSU - not a great brand but not a terrible one - for a while, and despite the fact that it should have been able to cope with a card I put in, it couldn't do it...)

also when people like Qtec say 550w PSU, that means at 25*C it can give out 550w. at more reasonable load temperatures, say 40 or 50*C it can drop to 400, 380 maybe. Amd you have to bear in mind, with time the prolonged heat does reduce the power you can draw from it.

i had a 480w thermaltake PSU (Bag of shit, i will NEVER buy another thermaltake) it had 18 amps at 12v output.

my current one 510w rated has 33 amps at 12v output. worlds apart.

and more on topic, i had a BFG 6800GT AGP, it was good :)

Yeah, I picked up an 'iCute' PSU from a local store (Maplins) out of desperation when one of my PSU's 'died in the night' (worked fine the previous day, wouldn't turn on the next morning... changing the fuse did nothing).

Everything on the box said it was a 600w PSU. There was no hint of it being less than that.

The rating on the PSU itself, however, was 480w sustained, 600w peak. If it hadn't been for the fact that I needed a PSU in that rig right then... I'd have taken it back and complained about false selling.

As much as power supply are sometimes over-rated the parts themselves can also be said to use way more than they actually do.

My rig for example is expected to 'require' a 1kw+ psu if you listen to nvidia.

In practice it uses at most ~450w while at full load. And that's including the 2 gpus that are supposed to take 275w each or so.

wow that's mindboggling :shock:

for end users that just adds to the confusion of making decissions

My plan is to get an eVGA SSC 275 gtx with 1 gb of memory, then further down the road pick up another one for SLI.

As far as power supplies, Corsair has a really good rep out there for their PSU's. I picked one up recently and I'm very happy with it.

i didn't know there was a 1gig version as well?

but i don't fancy changing my psu, it's quite the work
and wouldn't know how to, all those connectionwires, types of connections it must have and so on

there is a 1792gig version

does anybody know with my 500watt psu if that beast would run on my system? or should i play safe and settle for 896 version
what about the bottlenecking with my cpu?

thanks again for replying

as someone said before the extra vram wont make much difference, 10 watts maybe.

seeing as i may need the extra vram because of the th2go that would be the wisest choice i think

no chance of bottlenecking my system you think?
specs are on page one :oops:

the higher the resolution the less the CPU plays a roll in limiting the FPS. in crysis for example the CPU becomes no issue really ayt 2560x1600, past that if you use an E6600 or a i920, it wont matter more than 1 fps.

if you use a 295GTX or a 275GTX you would be amazed at the difference i think.

other thing is... if you upgrade your PC, your graphics card may have longer life than the one with less memory. I upgraded my CPU ram and Mobo from a Opteron 175 to a E8400 and kept my card, because at the time my graphics card was good enough to keep it running sweet, got double the FPS in WoW.