Orion Pirate, on 13 June 2012 - 04:48 AM, said:
WOW, that first card recommendation is really a nice card! I notice that it only requires one power plug, which is very nice for me. I think that might fit in my case. I believe that the extra 15 watts my system should be able to handle. I have a 400w PSU, I can get the rail Amp if need be.
Are there any NVIDIA cards you could recommend that are a similar size as the Powercolor you recommend above? Looking at many of them, they all require two power plugs, is this a problem to upgrade to? I assume not if the power draw of the new card is similar to my 8800...
Thank you!
P.S. I was worried that PCI-e 3.0 would not be compatible with my my PCI-e 1.0. But I have read that it should not be a problem, it just will be bottle necked.
P.P.S. This is an even smaller version of the Powercolor HD 7850:
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16814131464 Normally I would go with the PCS+ as I like to buy the enthusiast editions of cards, but would I notice a difference in my system if I decided to go with this card because its measurements are smaller?
the PCS+ card is as fast as a Nvidia Geforce GTX 570, hence why i recommend it. it's a decent bit faster than the stock cards.
As far as nvidia cards, the only real Nvidia card at this price point is the 560 ti, which note it's position on this graph;

But, as you can see this, the 560ti uses a decent bit more power;
Also, so long as you have a PCI-E x16 slot at the moment you won't see a difference in performance compared to 2.0 x16 or 3.0 x16 unless you're running a Geforce GTX 690 or a faster card.
And as you can see here, two six pin plugs, to get a single power plug you're looking at a 550ti at tops. Which is much slower. Keep in mind you don't have the largest amount of overhead out there for your GPU, and keep in mind the more power a card uses, the more heat is created. As far as length of a card, this 560ti seems to be the shortest of what i've seen looking quickly
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16814127565 and given it uses more power than a stock 560ti as it is, I don't recommend it given your power supply. Also, a stock Radeon HD 7850 will be faster, like that smaller Powercolor one you linked.;
As far as the difference in powercolor cards, the stock fan smaller card won't run as cool, overclock as high, or be as quiet as the PCS+ version. The PCS+ uses a custom PCB with additional VRM, a quieter fan (one of the quietest fans out there; 30dba at load,) and comes with a factory overclock higher than some 7850s reach normally. While using the same amount of power on average.
Edited by Vulpesveritas, 13 June 2012 - 07:20 AM.