# 550W VS ATI 4870/4850



## Hyena (Jul 7, 2009)

So... I had ordered a XFX ATI HD4850 for $119.99 but then newegg got back to me a full week later saying they couldn't process the order since my credit card had expired or something like that, Doh'! 

This however got me thinking... the XFX ATI HD4870 1GB has recently come way down in price, while I can easily grab about $200 I don't really want to go above that, I want an upgrade from my dieing Nvidia 8800GT. 

My problem is though, I have a BFG Tech 550W power supply ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817702010 ) 

The 4870 takes 2 6pin PCI E connectors which I have (1 6pin and 1 6+2 pin) I am pretty confident the PSU could handle the 4850 1GB pretty easy, but will it need something more beefy for the 4870? Keep in mind I do plan to crossfire with another 4870 someday down the line, but when/if I do that I will upgrade to a nicer power supply.

My system. 

AMD Phenom 8650 X3 triple core 95W AM2+ CPU
4GB DDR 1066 Ram
Single Western Digital 640GB caviar HDD. 
Gigabyte MA790X-UD4P Crossfire motherboard
running a single DVD burner drive
running 4 120mm fans, 1 140mm fan. one wifi PCI card and a USB 2.0 card.

Think the 550W PSU could tolerate me running a 4870 1GB ? or should I look into something more powerful? the BFG I have seems to be pretty nice quality, so I don't think it will explode or anything like that.

These are the two cards in question. I want to go ATI even though it will be a bitch and a half to play second life, I cant justify $184 for a GTX 260 core 216 when the 4870 is on par if not a little better in some cases. 

4870 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150394 
4850 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150351

And yes, I have thought about crossfire ATI HD4770 512MB but I want a nicer dual slot card.


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## Runefox (Jul 7, 2009)

Bitch or not to play Second Life (I haven't heard of any particular problems there, but I don't play), your Crossfire motherboard definitely pushes it in ATi's favour.

The Radeon HD 4870 runs around 150W on idle and just under 300W under load. After looking up its specs, I'd say your power supply will be able to just scrape by with the other stuff in your system if you popped a 4870 in, but you may want to upgrade to something a little beefier later on to give yourself some breathing room (and you'd definitely need something with more wattage and more amperage on the 12V rails if you wanted to add a second card).

My recommendation is PC Power & Cooling. They're now a subsidiary of OCZ (boo!), but they've got a long track record for making extremely solid gear for both high-end gaming and server usage. I've personally dealt with them, and they have exceptional build quality, with a lot more heft than you might expect, high-gauge, braided cables, and a 5 year warranty. They aren't too expensive, either. The 750W (continuous, 820W peak) S75QB weighs in at $99 on Newegg, and its bigger cousin, the 910W (continuous, 1000W peak) Silencer PPCS910 is $189. I'd definitely recommend them over other brands.


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## Hyena (Jul 7, 2009)

Runefox said:


> Bitch or not to play Second Life (I haven't heard of any particular problems there, but I don't play), your Crossfire motherboard definitely pushes it in ATi's favour.
> 
> The Radeon HD 4870 runs around 150W on idle and just under 300W under load. After looking up its specs, I'd say your power supply will be able to just scrape by with the other stuff in your system if you popped a 4870 in, but you may want to upgrade to something a little beefier later on to give yourself some breathing room (and you'd definitely need something with more wattage and more amperage on the 12V rails if you wanted to add a second card).
> 
> My recommendation is PC Power & Cooling. They're now a subsidiary of OCZ (boo!), but they've got a long track record for making extremely solid gear for both high-end gaming and server usage. I've personally dealt with them, and they have exceptional build quality, with a lot more heft than you might expect, high-gauge, braided cables, and a 5 year warranty. They aren't too expensive, either. The 750W (continuous, 820W peak) S75QB weighs in at $99 on Newegg, and its bigger cousin, the 910W (continuous, 1000W peak) Silencer PPCS910 is $189. I'd definitely recommend them over other brands.



oof, yeah I was afraid of that. I just really hope I dont blow out the PSU. was wondering though if the extra $27 is worth it for the 4870 ? I dont really know the benches of the 4870 VS the 4850. I do know the 4850 would be a lot better on my PSU and I know them in crossfire would be pretty nice, but the 4870 crossfire sounds even better for whatever reason. 

As for the PC Power and cooling, I really hope by "silencer" that means its'...silent. anything with a 80mm fan scaers me as I'm a noise nazi. I paid good money for the fans in my system and the components. the loudest fan in my system is 18 decibels which is pretty much un-hearable to our ears. I was looking at the 750W Corsair PSU but that sucker is pretty spendy and ultimately I want to crossfire, dual 4870's are gonna eat at least 600W under a load.


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## Runefox (Jul 8, 2009)

Hyena said:


> oof, yeah I was afraid of that. I just really hope I dont blow out the PSU. was wondering though if the extra $27 is worth it for the 4870 ? I dont really know the benches of the 4870 VS the 4850. I do know the 4850 would be a lot better on my PSU and I know them in crossfire would be pretty nice, but the 4870 crossfire sounds even better for whatever reason.


The 4870 is a good deal more powerful than the 4850, and the current top-end ATi single-GPU setup is a higher-clocked 4870 - the 4890. The 4870 has GDDR5 memory instead of GDDR3 on the 4850, the memory is clocked 1.6GHz (DDR) faster, and the GPU is clocked 225MHz faster. It's a significant increase, considering they're otherwise the same architecture. For $27, it's definitely worth it. The only thing you need to worry about is whether that power rating for that BFG power supply is continuous or peak. 550W continuous would most likely let you squeeze one of those in there, while 550W peak would be more up in the air.



> As for the PC Power and cooling, I really hope by "silencer" that means its'...silent. anything with a 80mm fan scaers me as I'm a noise nazi


The Silencer series has a major amount of passive cooling in place so that 80mm only has to keep the air moving, and it's thermally-controlled, too. Unfortunately, according to at least one review (I haven't touched the Silencer), it's loud (but otherwise absolutely amazing performance and stability). You can see that review here. He ends up recommending the Seasonic M12D if you want silent; I'm not really in any position to recommend anything in terms of silent power supplies, personally, so I can't make a recommendation either way. Though, if you want something that's _absolutely silent_, you could go for one of those zero-noise passive-cooled jobbies, but they're expensive and not at all powerful.



> I paid good money for the fans in my system and the components. the loudest fan in my system is 18 decibels which is pretty much un-hearable to our ears. I was looking at the 750W Corsair PSU but that sucker is pretty spendy and ultimately I want to crossfire, dual 4870's are gonna eat at least 600W under a load.



Yeah, that would be the upper limit of what that Corsair would be comfortable doing. Just so you know, Corsair's power supplies are rebranded from Seasonic, which are pretty OK (Seasonic again!).


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## ZentratheFox (Jul 8, 2009)

PCP&C have an amazing reputation for being the best of the best.

I have used Corsair PSU's in EVERY system I've built in the last year or so. I ran a 4850 Crossfire system with a Phenom II X4 940, 8GB RAM, 4 HDDs in RAID10, etc off of my Corsair VX550W PSU for a long time, until it finally started showing signs of overload. It now lives in a server.

Corsair and a 4870 1GB are the best bets.


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## yak (Jul 8, 2009)

Your current system with that new Radeon card would consume roughly 420W of power at peak load. BFG is not some no-name company, their power supplies pull their weight in wattage.

I'd say you're going to be fine if you get that Radeon. But if you'd want to go Crossfire with the same card, you'd have to upgrade to 650W or 700W as your consumption would rise to ~530Watt at peak load.

However, I see no reason to Crossfire the 4870 at the moment. It runs Crysis at 1920x1200 on mostly full settings @30 fps and lower res with max settings.

[edit]
When in doubt, http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp
[edit2]
And this http://www.anandtech.com/casecoolingpsus/showdoc.aspx?i=3413


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## Runefox (Jul 8, 2009)

> BFG is not some no-name company, their power supplies pull their weight in wattage.


If you say so; They're rebranded Topower power supplies. I don't have any experience with BFG's rebrands nor Topower's normal range, so quite frankly I have difficulty believing in them out of the gate, just as I do most rebrands unless I can verify that their underlying OEM is a decent manufacturer (I inherently distrust companies that try to sell outside of their niche with products from other companies).

But more importantly (and I mean this to really complement the information flow here):



> Your current system with that new Radeon card would consume roughly 420W of power at peak load





			
				BFG Tech Website said:
			
		

> DC Output
> >	+3.3V = 22A
> >	+5V = 15A
> >	+3.3V +5V Max. Combined Wattage = 130W
> ...



That's labelled "max", and considering the CPU is rated at 95W and the peak for the 4870 is around 300W, that's cutting it awfully close on the 12V. I'm hoping that these specs were gleaned from decent operating temperatures, but again, it'll probably work OK - but you'll again probably want to make your next purchase a new power supply.


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## AshleyAshes (Jul 8, 2009)

Eh, nevermind.


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## Hyena (Jul 8, 2009)

Alright, so here's what I've decided to do. I'm going to sell some more shit and hopefully get up around $300 

I am going to buy that XFX 4870 1GB and then I might post up something about which power supply. I thinking maybe the 850W corsair that can be found here. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139009 

If not that, the PC power and Cooling that was originally linked too. I really just don't want to risk the PSU taking out my brand new CPU and motherboard, it's really not worth the risk, while I dont need that 850W now I would like to use this PSU for 3-5 years and looking at the recent trend in video cards... well they aren't getting too much more efficient on the high end stuff. I think we'll see Crossfire/CrossfireX and SLI becoming more and more supported so eventually I think we'll all be running dual card systems... maybe. Any other ideas? I'd like to run dual 4870's someday so I'm thinking maybe 750+ W


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## ZentratheFox (Jul 9, 2009)

Hyena said:


> Alright, so here's what I've decided to do. I'm going to sell some more shit and hopefully get up around $300
> 
> I am going to buy that XFX 4870 1GB and then I might post up something about which power supply. I thinking maybe the 850W corsair that can be found here. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139009
> 
> If not that, the PC power and Cooling that was originally linked too. I really just don't want to risk the PSU taking out my brand new CPU and motherboard, it's really not worth the risk, while I dont need that 850W now I would like to use this PSU for 3-5 years and looking at the recent trend in video cards... well they aren't getting too much more efficient on the high end stuff. I think we'll see Crossfire/CrossfireX and SLI becoming more and more supported so eventually I think we'll all be running dual card systems... maybe. Any other ideas? I'd like to run dual 4870's someday so I'm thinking maybe 750+ W



I have that PSU in my main rig. Get it. It rocks.
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTU5OCwsLGhlbnRodXNpYXN0


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