that wont make any difference because he cant safely test it until he gets a new psu anyway. a quality 850 watt psu will be sufficient and allow some overclocking and still have decent headroom.
that wont make any difference because he cant safely test it until he gets a new psu anyway. a quality 850 watt psu will be sufficient and allow some overclocking and still have decent headroom.didn't read the entire thread... do you have a wattage reader? or can you get one?
Here come the graphs . Nobody plays furmark and you cant even produce those kinds of numbers with the driver limitations nVidia/ATI have imposed on furmark since. Anandtech leaves out dated sh t on their bench site. You're looking at 400 to 600 watts from the wall with 2 480's in a typical game, 850 is more than fine and 2 480's would put a 670 to shame performance wise. As long as you don't have issue with the heat or noise and you already have the cards just get a new psu and save your cash for GPU's that actually deliver coming out next year.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNhof-2nP2M
Are you saying to install both 480s on my 630w PSU and see what the power draw is with a wattage reader?didn't read the entire thread... do you have a wattage reader? or can you get one?
that wont make any difference because he cant safely test it until he gets a new psu anyway. a quality 850 watt psu will be sufficient and allow some overclocking and still have decent headroom.
who said anything about furmark? his system would peak around 600 watts in demanding games.No. Most games don't pull wattage like Furmark does. Furmark is a GPU killer, imo. With my old 5870s in xfire I was pulling low to mid 400s while playing UT3. Furmark pulled close to 600w iirc
480 sli is faster but a 670 would be a much better choice imo. you would get about 80% of the performance of 480 sli while using 300 watts less.Hmmm seems to be a lot of confusion between which is better 480 SLI or a 670. I tend to favor the 480 idea because I don't want to have to try to find buyers for my cards.
For what it is worth, the games I will be playing are Starcraft II and maybe Battlefield.
Get a wattage reader first, it's a win win situation. There is no depreciation value on a reader and it's performance.
If his current PSU is too small how is that going to help? It can't read any higher than his PSU can supply. Keep in mind that you don't want to run the PSU at, or near, it's limit.
Get a wattage reader first, it's a win win situation. There is no depreciation value on a reader and it's performance.
yep I already told him that...If his current PSU is too small how is that going to help? It can't read any higher than his PSU can supply. Keep in mind that you don't want to run the PSU at, or near, it's limit.
You are assuming. It's going to help find out for sure. Plus he can use it later on down the road. It's at most 20$ Who says he has to use it for his PC anyways, he can use it elsewhere. Do other wattage readers come out that will out-perform any current one like video cards and CPUs do in ~ 6 months? A reader doesn't depreciate in value like a GPU or CPU does.
I've also stated not to go beyond 50-80% usage on a PSU for long extended periods.
So what exactly is the Wattage draw then on a pair of SLI 480s in Star Craft II & Battlefield?
That's the major point. It's better to have a wattage reader than not, than spend money on a PSU and not know the difference.
Lets get out of this asinine argument and ask why he isn't getting a GTX 670 in 2012 anyways. that's what irks me the most..
He could probably get rid of the 480s for 150-170 a piece.. maybe 300 for both and use that money for a GTX 670 while still maintaining the 150$ price point/max he wants to spend and probably come out even or under while staying reasonably within his PSU capacity range. That makes the most sense to me.