MDFubar

Ok, I need some help here. I recently bought a Radeon x1300, 512mb video card. It recommends that I have a 300w power supply, I fall short at 250. The question is whether it is worth it to buy a 350 or a 550? Also will a 550 be too much and cause damage to other components? I have upgraded the memory, hard drive, and now the video card from the original specs.
My system:
Dell 8300
P4 processor - 3.0ghz
2g Ram
160g hard drive
512mb video card
1g Ethernet card
10/100 ethernet card
1 DVD drive
1 CD rom drive
2 flat screen monitors

Anything else that may be imperative?
Thanx for any help you can give.

Trooper

personally send the the x1300 back and get the x1600 or x800. Granted the x1300 has more ram but the other 2 will be a much better card in the long run. A 550 wont hurt anything will probably make things easier on the system. Just my recommendations....or better yet switch the better side of sears and get a Nvidia card.

MDFubar

The Nvidia card would be better, but at the moment the finances only allowed for the x1300 and the lifetime warranty is a plus considering... Waiting for a house to sell. I burned up my stock 9800xt and had to settle for a 1550 for a bit......slowly getting to where I want to be.
Thanx for the help though.

ZWood15

I'd go with the 550. It wont hurt and will leave room in case you want to upgrade something else...

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"By Any Means"

sc1ence

you may get more hits on this in the general hardware forums. it all depends on the price of each, the quality of each and how long you intend to use it. if you know your going to keep the same case psu for 3+ years, get the 550w. if you know this case psu will not be upgraded to a new card, ever, then get the 350, assuming that 350 is of good quality. given that you were frugal enough to get the cheaper vid car, i would suggest you go with the cheaper psu as well.

if it was my comp, I would get the 550w psu with the expectation that I will use it for all future upgrades till it dies in 3-5 years. most modern vid cards will not run with the 350w psu. you also have to consider that you have 2 optical drives and a single HD. if you add in more drives your system will be at its limit with a 350w psu and you may overtax a cheap quality psu.

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Switch

Don't let the 512 ram fool you. Card manufacturers often add ram to dying prodcut lines to make them look more appealing. A 128 card with a more powerful chipset will outperform a 512mb with mediocre core while playing at the settings the worse card will allow. (if you try to turn things up to max with a good core that lacks ram then you'll get some stuttering issues as ram is cleared for new textures as you look around the world)

As far as power, there's no such thing as too much, the psu's are all supposed to conform to certain standards. PSUs with more wattage can accomidate a greater demand (more hardware, hungry videocards, etc)

If you plan on using this psu in a future build a year from now, it's worth getting a 550 if you want to canabalize it for the next system. Otherwise you can get a 350 older PSU for much less money. Since many higher voltage cpus are now conforming to the newer ATX standards, you may find older atx variants that work on your MOBO to be cheap since their demand is decreasing.

Life time warranty = lifetime of product line, not life time of ownership. At least in most cases, so read the fine print. If the card dies next year but it has been discontinued, its lifetime is over -- no new card.

Anywho, im going to plug toms hardware again, its a good place to learn.
www.tomshardware.com it also has regularly updated video card performance comparisons.

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|TG|Switch

Better known as:
That noob who crashed the chopper.
That noob who ran over the mine.
That noob who TK'd me with a sniper rifle.
That noob who hit that APC at 300m with light AT! Our APC...

Trooper

Thats the key right there. Ive heard that before and its worded bad.

MDFubar

Thanks for all the input guys! I will be going with the 550. This system is alrewady 4 years old and I just keep plugging away with whatever I can continually upgrade. I will probably add an additional hard drive later and upgrade to a better card within the next 6 months. Again, Thank you!

Eroak

Good choice. Higher Wattage doesn't hurt anything other then your power bill. The only time I recommend a smaller PSU, is for servers and PC's that have 99% uptime. 200watts will save you up to $80.00 on your Power bill(Depends on area).

I use a 750 thermaltake and I went from a 550. My uptime is 15% and I haven't noticed a budge on my bill.

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MDFubar

Alrighty then, thanks for all the help. I found one that should be compatable with my system, had a couple of good reviews and I will attach two links if anyone is interested in this model: http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=28550

http://www.bjorn3d.com/read_pf.php?cID=939

Thanks guys!

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