Low-power upgrade?

[mosfet]

I'm currently chugging along on a passive 8600GT on an OCZ Modstream 450w PSU, are there any cards around atm that provide a decent performance boost without requiring a new PSU, or is it worth waiting for the next generation of <40nm chipsets?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

An HD4770 or Sapphire HD4850 Vapor X should do the job:

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/s....html?ASU-4770

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/s...tml?SAP-4850VX

The HD4770 is slightly slower than an HD4850 but since it is a 40nm GPU has relatively low peak power consumption. The HD4850 Vapor X has lower power consumption than other HD4850 cards(higher than the HD4770 though) and has very good aftermarket cooler too. Both will run fine off your PSU.

[mosfet]

Thanks CAT, I had looked at the 4770 but was put off by the 450w+ requirement (as I'm already running a lot of HDDs).

Will give it a go.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The HD4770 has lower peak power consumption than either an 8800GT or HD4830. I would also use ATI Tray Tools to set custom lower 2D clocks too.

ATM, I have a Shuttle SD37P2 V1 SFF system with a Q6600,4GB of DDR2 RAM,2 Samsung SATA 320gb hard drives,an IDE DVD rewriter, an HD4830 graphics card and a 975X motherboard running off a 400w PSU so I would think that an HD4770 should run fine on your PSU!

[sadbuttrue]

The wattage requirements manufacturers give for graphics cards are somewhat of a joke.

I'm running 2x4770s mildly overclocked with an overclocked cpu on a 430watt PSU. I hit 350watts under synthetic cpu+gpu load at the wall, which at 80&#37; effeciency = 280watts being drawn from the PSU.

[mosfet]

Right, so they're just covering themselves, I guess?

Having just seen the 4850 Vapor thread in this forum I'm torn between the two. Will do some research.

Cheers guys.