Legit Reviews

Should my 480 W power supply be able to handle the 512 MB, Radeon X1950 Pro (AGP) or no? If i need to upgrade, any suggestions? My only concern is that i believe i have an 18A on the 12V rail. Honestly, i don't understand PSU talk at all. I don't know what anything means. All i know is that the numbers work in pairs on the side of my power supply (eg: +12V--> 18A, don't know what that even means).

I'm not even sure which cables do what, which one is supposed to be the 12V cable that everyone is concerned w/ when it comes to their graphics card? I don't want to plug the wrong cable into the wrong thing and F up my components. All the cords just "spring" out of my PSU in one big group and then splinter out into my motherboard, drives, and video card, not sure what's what (other than they come in different shapes and sizes). Sorry, i'm retarded. Thanks for any help.

Anyways, here's my specs just FYI:

+5V/40A
+3.3V/30A
+12V/18A
-5V/.3A
-12V/.8A
+5VSB/2A

...anyone?

From what I can find, you only need a 450W PSU so you should be fine.

Dan

i guess, but everyone is always complaining that their 530 PSU won't run the card b/c they don't have like a 30A on the 12V rail. Just curious

heh, yeah i did see the 30A but that's for a fully loaded system, and you shouldn't be sucking down that much power with the rest of your rig.

Dan

thanks bro, appreciate it.

I believe is more than enough...
Just for comparison see this watt chart for 8800GTX http://www.xbitlabs.com/misc/picture/?s ... ll.gif&1=1

Although you connect the card to the 12v rail if it need more power it goes to other rails... so I believe 480w PS is sufficient

I recently purchased 1950 XT AGP. Prior to this purchase, I spent much time researching the 1950 AGP on many forums. I read accounts from disparate posters that had the 1950 Pro AGP or the 1950XT AGP. One consistent issue that ran through all of the threads was the need to have a high quality power supply with over thirty amperes on the twelve volt rail.

For my part, I decided to upgrade my Enermax with twenty nine amperes and replace it with a Corsair HX520 as I would be very close when combined with the rest of my system.

http://www.jonnyguru.com/review_details.php?id=28

Good luck.

I continue to cobble together a mid to high end system without going to the next level. I have a 2.8 GHz P4 with Vista, 4 GB memory. I had previously upgraded to an Antec Trio 430 power supply and have an ATI x850 AGP. I decided to upgrade and got an HIS x1950 Pro AGP with 512 MB. It specified to get at least 500 watts so I upgraded to an Antec NeoHE 550. It installed very easily.

The new x1950 card showed no benefit in BF2142 or Guild Wars or War Chiefs or Halo 2 for Vista. I used the latest Catalyst 7.5 drivers. When the system would get very stressed out the monitor would corrupt and then a reboot would have to be necessary. This happened with either DVI or VGA output.

I reinstalled the x850 and the play is really great. The upgrade from the Trio 430 to the NeoHE 550 power supply is just fantastic. More power is always good but this increase improved the performance of the ATI x850 beyond belief. Best Tweak I ever did.

My honest opinion is to upgrade the power supply (relatively cheap) and stick with what you have until you can get a PCIe 2.0 with 16 lanes. By October 2007 there should be a quantum improvement available with the new architectures on the motherboards.