Which Radeon 9800?

[StarkMjolk]

Sorry mate, I'll pass that to someone else. But Saphire are good cards I believe... I don't have any clue about how the prices are in UK ether since I'm Swedish

[BenW]

ah, thanks

Looks like i'll be getting the new card soon, i can aford the £140 now but will have to wait a few weeks for a new PSU

Will the 9800 Pro be ok on the 250W until i get the new PSU?

[BenW]

oh, and the ultimate edition of the Saphire on komplett is an extra £40, worht it?

[StarkMjolk]

I don't think it's worth £40 no... but I'm not 100%. And what's the rest of the spec on the machine? 250W will be a little too low, but could work if you avoided overclocking...

[BenW]

Dell Dimension 4500
P4 2.26 533FSB
256MB PC2100
Geforce 4 MX420 64MB
CD/RW DVD Combo
40GB (Don't need anything bigger)
250W PSU
Sound Blaster Live 5.1 Sound Card
Harmon Kardon 395 2.1 Speakers
Dell 17" Analogue TFT

Do you know if the ultimate is the same but with a great big fan on it?
I suppose i could just lower the core/memory speeds a little bit if it doesn't work

[StarkMjolk]

I believe that should work... if you're unlucky it might get unstable at times, but it should be enough until you get a new PSU.

I don't know the exact difference to the ultimate edition, but I don't believe it can be worth $40...

[BenW]

actually £40 which is a little more :-(

I think what it is basically is a huge heatsink over the card, front and back instead of a fan so it silences it!

I think they can be bought seperatly for much less than £40 so it can't be worth it

[StarkMjolk]

Sorry, just me misstyping.. ment £40.

If that's the case, you know what to get
Good luck mate, hope you'll get it up and running on your current PSU.

[Romanov]

saphire are v good but i had to ditch my dell to run it

[Stewart]

You'll have no problems with Sapphire, they are quality.

The Ultimate version is a 9800pro with a Zalman ZM80-C heatpipe system and a Zalman ZM-OP1 80mm silent Fan to cool the underside and memory. Its a top air cooler, silent and does the job, but you can buy the card and cooler for less than the cost of an Ultimate package, and attach it yourself.

As for the PSU, what brand is it? A quality make, like Antec, Enermax, etc, or a dodgy one, like Q-Tec or an unbranded model?

[BenW]

well, its the one which came with my dell dimension 4500 so its branded up as dell i would imagine

Will the card work fine with an AGP 4x motherboard?

[StarkMjolk]

I know those PSUs and they are quite poopy... but I still believe the 9800 could run there, even if just barely. And yeah, you can run the card in a 4x AGP slot.

[BenW]

thanks, is it going to use less power in an agp 4x than an agp 8x ?

[Romanov]

No I believe its the same power output (or thats what I was told and so far no ones been wrong on this forum) it is possible to run on a Dell PSU but they ship as 250watt psu's I was warned this would cause problems with the system as the Dell psu is a load of rubbish so I ended up getting new mobo etc as listed below and transferring all the Dell bits to a new machine. The Dell pSU is underpowered for the new gen cards. Overclocking for instance would be next to inpossible.

[BenW]

my dell is actually one of the few models which has a standard ATX PSU but unfortionatly its a proprietory mobo.

I have read on the Dell forums that the Dell PSU is more like a 350W but rated at a 250W.

I will get the card and a new PSU at a later date, just want to make sure that the card will work on my current PSU for a while.

So all i will need is the card, nothing else.

[BenW]

just looking on komplett i realised that its a lite version and doesn't include any games etc but looking on ebuyer there is the retail version for £157