ATi Radeon 3450 AGP Low Profile Graphics Card

[Neostar]

I have a very old sff computer with a Radeon 9800 Pro card installed, it has been running great for the past 4 years with a lowly 280w psu. But now I want to upgrade the graphics card to a 2400 Pro but could not find it anywhere so l looked at the next best card, the Radeon 3450 agp low profile. My question is power consumption, how much does it use and will my psu cope?

[Pob255]

AFAIK the 9800Pro uses 47w under load, the 3450 uses 36w under load, so it's actually less.

[Neostar]

This SFF (Soltek 3401m) I have does contain a lot of stuff, as well as the Radeon 9800Pro 128mb graphics card it also has a Audigy sound card, 2 hard drives, 1GB RAM and a DVD Rewriter. It turns out my PSU is only 270w and not 280w as I've mentioned. I don't intend to upgrade this PSU because this desktop PC has become an old relict and I want to move on to a new one, unfortunately the recession have made things very difficult. I have decided to give this PC a last upgrade, the graphics card.

I have been looking at the reviews of the PCI-E version of the card and it seems to use a lot of power but I'm not sure how they worked this out as I think they meant overall power consumption. I want to be sure before buying this card.

Has anyone tried the Asus Radeon 3450 AGP Low Profile card in an SFF PC before? if so what was the experience, did it work?

[scaryjim]

a 3450 AGP appears to require an additional molex power connector. This would certainly suggest a similar power draw to a 9800pro, which also uses a single molex connector for its additional power. If the computer was working fine with a 9800Pro, it should work fine with a 3450. Please feel free to list the rest of your components so I can do a more detailed estimate, but I'd be amazed if you were pulling even half of your PSUs rated 270W. Be aware, however, that unless you're specifically looking for DX9c / DX10 compatibility a 3450 won't be a significant upgrade over a 9800Pro - they should have pretty similar performance...

[Neostar]

Well at the moment I only need a graphics card with a HD decoder to playback some TV recordings and maybe do some video transcoding. This is the reason I chose the 2400Pro but I can't find it anywhere to buy, so the 3450 became the only option. To tell you the truth I wouldn't mind a little bit of extra performance on some old games

Anyway here is what I got from the SiSoftware Sandra Hardware Overview...

EDIT: Just noticed it doesn't show I have a Creative Labs Audigy 2 ZS installed and that Drive (H: ) is a Daemon Tools virtual drive

EDIT 2: Actually it does show the Audigy

SiSoftware Sandra

Computer
Model : To Be Filled By O.E.M. To Be Filled By O.E.M.
Workgroup : WORKGROUP
Host Name : matrix
User : Administrator

Processor
Model : Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.20GHz
Speed : 3.2GHz
Cores per Processor : 1 Unit(s)
Threads per Core : 2 Unit(s)
Integrated Data Cache : 2x 8kB, Synchronous, Write-Thru, 4-way, 64 byte line size, 2 lines per sector
L2 On-board Cache : 2x 512kB, ECC, Synchronous, ATC, 8-way, 64 byte line size, 2 lines per sector

Computer
Mainboard : INTEL SpringDale-G
BIOS : AMI 080010 11/01/2004
Bus(es) : ISA X-Bus AGP PCI IMB USB FireWire/1394 i2c/SMBus
Multi-Processor (MP) Support : No
Multi-Processor Advanced PIC (APIC) : Yes
Total Memory : 1GB DIMM DDR

Chipset
Model : Intel 82865G/PE/P, 82848P DRAM Controller / Host-Hub Interface
Front Side Bus Speed : 4x 200MHz (800MHz)
Total Memory : 1GB DIMM DDR
Memory Bus Speed : 2x 200MHz (400MHz)

Memory Module(s)
Memory Module : Kingston K 512MB DDR PC3200U DDR-200 (3-3-3-8 2-11-0-0)
Memory Module : Kingston K 512MB DDR PC3200U DDR-200 (3-3-3-8 2-11-0-0)

Video System
Video Adapter : RADEON 9800 PRO (PS2.0, VS2.0 378MHz, 128MB 337MHz, AGP 3.00)

Graphics Processor

Storage Devices
WDC WD360GD-00FNA0 37GB (SATA150, 8MB Cache) : 34GB (C: )
ST3200822AS (200GB, SATA150, 3.5", 8MB Cache) : 186GB (E: ) (F: ) (G: )
HUAWEI MMC Storage 2GB (USB) : 2GB (K: )
ATAPI DVD A DH20A3H (ATA66, DVD+-RW, CD-RW, 2MB Cache) : N/A (D: )
XIL 5QVOXMZ0 (SCSI, BD-R, HD-DVD-R, DVD+-R-DL, CD-R) : N/A (H: )
HUAWEI Mass Storage (USB) : 33MB (J: )

Logical Storage Devices
Hard Disk (C: ) : 34GB (NTFS) @ WDC WD360GD-00FNA0 37GB (SATA150, 8MB Cache)
SPACE1 (E: ) : 100GB (NTFS) @ ST3200822AS (200GB, SATA150, 3.5", 8MB Cache)
SPACE2 (F: ) : 40GB (NTFS) @ ST3200822AS (200GB, SATA150, 3.5", 8MB Cache)
BACKUP (G: ) : 46GB (NTFS) @ ST3200822AS (200GB, SATA150, 3.5", 8MB Cache)
Optical Drive (D: ) : N/A @ ATAPI DVD A DH20A3H (ATA66, DVD+-RW, CD-RW, 2MB Cache)
Optical Drive (H: ) : N/A @ XIL 5QVOXMZ0 (SCSI, BD-R, HD-DVD-R, DVD+-R-DL, CD-R)
3.5" 1.44MB (A: ) : N/A
T-Mobile (J: ) : 27MB (CDFS) @ HUAWEI Mass Storage (USB)
Removable Drive (K: ) : 2GB (FAT) @ HUAWEI MMC Storage 2GB (USB)

Peripherals
LPC Hub Controller 1 : Intel 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) LPC Interface Bridge
LPC Legacy Controller 1 : Winbond W83627THF/THG
Audio Device : Creative Labs SB0350 Audigy ZS
Serial Port(s) : 4
Parallel Port(s) : 1
Disk Controller : Intel 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) EIDE Controller
Disk Controller : Intel 82801EB (ICH5) SATA Controller
USB Controller 1 : Intel 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #1
USB Controller 2 : Intel 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #2
USB Controller 3 : Intel 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #3
USB Controller 4 : Intel 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #4
USB Controller 5 : Intel 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB 2.0 EHCI Controller
FireWire/1394 Controller 1 : Creative Labs Audigy 2 Firewire Controller
FireWire/1394 Controller 2 : Soltek Computer FW322/323 IEEE1394 OHCI FireWire Controller
SMBus/i2c Controller 1 : Intel 801xx/63xx SMBus

Printers and Faxes
Printer : Nitro PDF Driver (600x600, Colour)
Printer : Microsoft XPS Document Writer (600x600, Colour)
Printer : Canon iP2500 series (USB, Colour)

Network Services
Network Adapter : Realtek RTL8139 Family PCI Fast Ethernet NIC - Packet Scheduler Miniport
Network Adapter : TAP-Win32 Adapter V8 - Packet Scheduler Miniport
Network Adapter : VirtualBox Host-Only Ethernet Adapter - Packet Scheduler Miniport (Ethernet, 100Mbps)

Power Management
Mains (AC) Line Status : On-Line

Operating System
Windows System : Microsoft Windows XP Professional 5.01.2600 (Service Pack 3)
Platform Compliance : x86

[scaryjim]

OK, your processor looks to be the hungriest, hottest running P4 ever made and why anyone would put one in an SFF is beyond me! Apart from that there's nothing in your system to make me think it can't cope with the addition of a 3450, and assuming Pob's figure of 36W is right ( I have no reason to doubt it) it'll work fine. Indeed, as Pob says and I've reminded you of a couple of times now, the 3450 draws less power than the 9800. So if your PC runs the 9800 OK, it'll also run the 3450.

[Neostar]

...huh..okay but what about the RAM, the 9800Pro has 128mb and the 3450 has 512mb, wouldn't this cause it to use more power

[scaryjim]

No. The 3450 actually uses less RAM chips than the 9800Pro, they've just got a higher density. So that's less components, therefore less power draw.

Don't forget that the 9800Pro is about 5 year old technology, whereas the 3450 is only a couple of years old. Technology improves with time, and that generally means lower power draw with the same sepcifications, or the same power draw with much higher specifications. Besides, the power draw of RAM is minimal compared to the power draw of a CPU or GPU.