I'm a little worried about the Radeon 9700 Pro that I just ordered to upgrade my box. ATI recommends a 300 watt power supply and mine is only 250. Anyone know if this is going to cause real mischief on my system?

Jocund, Storm Warden
Firiona Vie

I just put a Radeon ATI 9700 Pro in my wife's PC. That was a relatively new PC from Alienware, and I really don't know the power supply but it is probably 300 watts. When you install the 9700 video card, you will notice that it comes with a Y cable for the power. You disconnect the power going to your disk drive and connect it to the 9700, and then you connect the other end of the Y cable to the disk drive. It must pull a heck of a lot of power not to be able ot get it's power from the usually bus. I hope it all works for you.

There is a reason the ask for it... But not require it.

It should be fine as long as her case isn't loaded with other stuff.

So, if you already have 3 harddrives drives, a few cdrom drives, and extra fans... I would look at upgrading it. It WILL take extra power... how much, I don't know.

The biggest problems people have over in the tech board, on the official EQ site, is when they have BOTH that card and an AMD proc.

The power required by both, or something, seem to be a bad combo in EQ (or those people just don't know how to set up their computer)

LOL, a guild mate had the problem of using a amd 1100 with a top end geforce card and the screen started going dark/blank and all kinds of problems. My understanding is that the power supply was undersized.

One path is to buy the card and then expect to replace your power supply if you see problems. I dont think power supplies cost that much and you can call around to local reps and see what they sell for. Radio Shack may even have a 300w power supply.

In any case, A power supply will use consumed energy + wasted energy. The wasted energy shows up in heat and the amount of wasted energy is directly related to the quality of materials in the power supply and how close to the max design you push the supply.

You might lower the life of your power supply by running near the top end of the spec. I did this once and the power supply took out the motherboard with it when it died. Power supplies are easy to swap out unless you have a micro-ATX chassis.

Fern

My suggestion (being an owner of a 9700 Pro) 9700 pro actual uses a Floppy Power Connector. I had a 300 watt, burnt it out - bought a 400W, works fine. I may even over kill next time and get a 550W since they running around 24.00. Bottom line just go to www.pricewatch.com and click on case power supplies.

Question does your board have 8x video ?, if not I would suggest a Gainward 4200 ti, you will probably get close to the same performance as a 4600 ti (gainwards are overclocked) at 4x AGP. I believe Tom's Hardware showed a 10% difference which is very minor for the price difference between the two. Unless your upgrading your motherboard etc.. to increase your overall performance and get your system up to a 333 bus speed.. then really your wasting your money IMO (tho there will be some experts that may tell you different.. I don't mind reading sometimes I learn and apply it to my gamer machines when I update them.

I am running at the moment: MSI (MS-6590) VIA Apollo KT400, VIA VT 8233A, ATI RADEON 9700, 2 gig RAM DDR 2700, AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2600+ (333), Win XP PRO (SP1), SB Audigy Gamer, DVD/CD - Some WD Hard Drives - Overall the cost was pretty cheap, built my own. Solid doesn't give me any issues. I don't load chit on it except for current games, I don't surf the internet at all with it unless downloading a driver update, no e-mail, no MS office products .. no nothing but what I need to game. I don't use any virus protection except for trendmicro's webscanner which doesn't actively scan my system. I just don't use it except for a gaming computer.

My other puter which I use mostly for internet, mail etc is a dual processor 1 gig, with 1 gig SDRAM, MMX Geforce 2 400, 3 different operating systems on a Trios all 40 gig drives and its been solid as a rock and can still play EQ and other games on it w/o all the graphics options. Its a great machine for just surfing, testing etc..

I have a 3rd computer with a 2200 AMD XP with a Gainward Geforce 4 (4200) and its simply my old gamer machine tho it doesn't perform as well as my main Gamer its rock solid and I have not had any issues with it. Use this when twinking or when friends are over and they want to play also.

None of this is to boast, its all about the experience I get from the game, I hate crashing, I hate lock ups, I hate lag, and I want to see that waterfall in the background and hear the booms and crackles of the game.. I want the experience so I pay for it.

Wish I had that sort of setup Sobe. Sounds like alot of work to me setting it all up :) . Although I play EQ alot I like to do all my jobs on the one machine so it does tend to get loaded down with junk. My computer moves around with me alot and to not have what I need when I need becomes annoying, so my computer gets overloaded quickly :)

I am looking in the next 2 months to update to a new machine hoping it will be enough to keep me going for another 2 years (like my current one has). How does the 9900 compare to the 9700Pro, and how does Radeon's compare with GeForce (in particular the upcoming FX). I hear the FX has a terrible fan on it (like all my computers have) but does this really deterr from the performance.

This problem happened to me when I bought the 9700 Pro Card. My old PC was a Compaq 2.0 gig PC but with a 250 watt power supply. It couldn't support the card period. You need at least a 300 to 350 watt ps for this card to work. There are a few options you can do:

1. You can upgrade your power supply as well. A 350 watt ps goes about 30 to 60 $. This will fix your problem and any place where Best Buy is located can install it pretty cheap.

2. Get a new PC with the card in it. [this is what I did].


The reason I did the 2nd was because Compaq [I will never ever buy another one of these] have their Power Supplies .3 inches larger than your standard PS. THat means without drilling into your casing, the new upgraded PS doesn't fit into the slot. Oh, it gets even better. After I found a 450 watt ps for 65$, I tried to have someone install it into my old trusty Compaq but the power cables where too big to hook up to the power supply. [good olde Compaq.]

So after much fustration [and returning everything that I had bought.] my loving husband decided to buy me a new PC from Alienware with the card in it. Guess he felt sorry for me. lol. I hope you have better luck than me on this venture.

V

It will probably work, but the overall performance of all the components in your computer will take a hit. I have friends that say the best upgrade you can buy for your computer is a power supply if you are slumming with a 200 or 250 watt. My friend got a 350 watt power supply and claimed that it speeded his computer up more than the 128 megs of ram he installed.