9800XT\Pro Power Consumption

Hi All!

I was just reading this article over at X-Bits concerning the Power Consumption of the newer ATI & nVidia Graphics cards & spotted this graph. Take a look at the power requirements of the 9800XT\Pro cards at idle - could this be part of the problem? Thats a lot of wattage for an idling AGP card, maybe this could be part of the reason they experience problems for some people at boot-up as the initial drain is so great it causes a non-boot in many systems.

X-Bits Article:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/ati-vs-nv-power.html

Graph courtesy of X-Bits:


Regards, Balrog

Good find Balrog! I would like to think that I have a juicy PSU. My buddy here in town with the Infinity board has a 9800pro. I'll see if he will let me test it in my rig.

Hey sQUiRLy!

Yeah that'd be cool, trying to dig up as much info as I can for the Radeon\Shuttle users out there in hopes we can keep them running fast & stable. Looks like the only 2 solutions are either don't use a Radeon 9700 0r 9800 series card or have a bad-*** PSU.

Hopefully ATI can come up with some type of BIOS or driver upgrade that owners of these cards could use to make booting less of an issue.

Regards, Balrog

I read somewhere, that you can put a switch into the 5v line into the card, start your comp, then turn on the card. I also have one of those Antec Neopower PSUs being delivered 8/30. I'm anxious to see what it does compared to the allied 400 watt that is in the rig now.

Yup, now thats what I'm talking about!

Antec Neopower = Bad-*** PSU!!!

Regards, Balrog

All systems were go with the Sapphire 9800pro 128MB. I powered up and shut down several times at max OC with no issues. I ran 3DMark with the card's default speeds and got some good numbers too :link If my memory serves me correctly, I think I had a problem switching from nVidia to ATi because I didn't uninstall the drivers correctly or not at all. I ended up using Driver Cleaner 3, which I found here: 3Dchipset.com and followed the directions they listed for removal and all was good after that.

as always Balrog a quality thread/post from you.my question is, are the people that are haveing problems with the r300 and up using marginal psu's in the first place?I ran my 9500pro on this board with a Hiro(compaq)400 watt(12 amps on 12v) without any problems and have never had a problem with my 9800pro powered by my FSP400.although I can see how this may be a problem for those with a SFF shuttle system with its lower rated psu.

Yeah Colt, I believe thats the majority of the problem, the days of using the no-name 300watter that comes with your case are over if you're going to use the latest AGP cards IMHO. I haven't seen a lot of XPC users complaining but I don't follow those as much & Shuttle has updated the PSU in the newer models so anyone with the $ for an XPC & a kick-butt AGP card probably has the newer 250watt PSU. The Hero is decent PSU, it maybe low on amps but depending on the config it probably has enough watts behind it to work, I know someone with an Antec SL300S who doesn't have issues either, but thats also a quality little PSU. I believe Heros are rated like FSPs in that they list the max amperage not the peak amperage that most makers use in their labeling. My new FSP530watt has 18amps on 12V but 35amps peak. FSP use ~70% of PSU output to rate their products not the 100% that others use.

Sounds good sQUiLRY - you're still running your tweaked TT 430watter right? I'm sure proper drivers & loading contribute to some of the newbs issues but I think thats just part of the answer.

Regards, Balrog

Yup, I'm using the Tt 420 with a little tweak on the 12V.