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Spec: Pentium 4 3GHz HT, 1Gb RAM, GeForce 7600GT 256mb, 160Gb Hard Drive
Any solutions would be welcome
> Question: GFX card fried before with same specs above except
> I've now added the PSU - original 305w. So changed card, and
> yes, no news about warranty from Inno or MicroDirect, and
> changed PSU. Machine has never been cooler!! Fans give feet
> chilblains! Before PSU change, gfx card running at 850,
> now running at 610 after game play. Was the original spec
> under-powered? GFX card probably was but why the dramatic
> difference in all areas, not just gaming?
Missed this question.
In general with PSUs, quality of components, ampage and efficiency are as important as the wattage. In theory 305w should have been enough to power your GFX card. But if its a poor quality PSU then it probably wont delivery anything like that consistently anyway. Its entirely possible your old PSU was contributing to the heat itself by not being very efficient at dissipating heat.
MERRY CHRISTMAS and A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR
Enjoy
Machine specs now:
Pentium 4 3.0GHz 1Gb RAM BFG GeForce 7900GS OC 160GB HD 450w PSU
Question: GFX card fried before with same specs above except I've now added the PSU - original 305w. So changed card, and yes, no news about warranty from Inno or MicroDirect, and changed PSU. Machine has never been cooler!! Fans give feet chilblains! Before PSU change, gfx card running at 850, now running at 610 after game play. Was the original spec under-powered? GFX card probably was but why the dramatic difference in all areas, not just gaming?
Every combination of components is going to have different power requirements. Theres no way to pick a value that isnt going to be misleading or confusing to some combination of components.
The fact is games themselves dont have power requirements anyway. They arent using power on their own, they are using the components of your machine. It surely has to be implicit in the ownership of an AMD processor or a 8800GTX or 2 hard drives or extra fans etc.. that you have a PSU capable of powering them. If its not, what else are you going to want to put on the game box? Must have access to electricity supply? :)
Like Garin said, you can't just give a blanket estimate of how much power it'll require because it'll vary somewhat between basically equivalent (in terms of performance) components, there's too many combinations of hardware and it's further dependant upon things completely unrelated to the hardware the game's most interested by. Kind of rough but you get the point.
If minimum and recommended specs are given, following testing on machines, then surely the PSU size could also be included as is CPU capacity.
Not connected to above, but Nvidia 8000 series require 450PSU minimum and in sli mode even bigger.
Am I missing the point or what?
Even if you did want to say its the responsibility of game developers to state PSU needs, how would you do it? Every computer has different power needs. I've got 4 hard drives in my machine at the moment, any minimum PSU requirements would be meaningless because you cant factor in my HDD power requirements.
Tweakguides.com have provided reliable and almost instant solutions to all new game problems and can be a recommended source of information. Installing new drivers for every new game isn't acceptable....
However, information now indicates that PSU power and capabilities are important factors in running new games, especially Crysis.
Having recently read the 'package' specs for Crysis,
this factor is not mentioned. Indeed, Crysis spec requirements are quite acceptable for XP machines with no mention of any PSU minimums.
Having suffered a gfx card fry with MoHA, isn't it about time this factor was introduced to game packaging? Just a thought..