Thread: Why does my 8800GT work with a 250 watt power supply?

I have a 250watt power supply with about 12 amps on the 12 volt rail. I have a 4400+ Athon 64 x2 processor that I overclocked to a 4800+, DDR-667 that I overclocked to DDR-759, the 8800GT, a cd drive, hard drive, yeah...basically, I was wondering if this could be affecting my performance, or if I shouldn't worry about it. I'm getting scores of about the mid 9000 in 3d mark... could I be doing damage to my system? I've had a few artifacts sometimes after a few hours of gaming, but I've attributed that to overclocking my gpu about 15%, aloing with my other components...

I'd say you're very much pushing the limits on the PSU. Get a stouter one ASAP.

it might work, but cause overheating, check the temperature.

NOPE, get minimum of 500watt for that card, you need sufficient power for cpu and other components. anyways if you max your power supply its lifetime is quickly shortened.most power supplies efficiency is 70% and that means 70% of 250 watts, and that card uses about 100watts. the rest is not enough to power the rest of the computer.

Those "requirements" on the video card are way exaggerated

req. for that card are 425w so yea i would say get a bigger one ive got a 8800 gt oc 512mb and use an ocz 600x stealth xtream and every thing runs great

U r sure gonna burn out something soon.... u r 'sucking' the juice right outta that PSU and things r gonna get very hot in there. This probably wont do damage in the short term but will in the long. I have an 8500 gt 512mb and min recomendation is 300watt. I'd recomend min 400watt for you - PSUs are not expensive but all that equipment inside your PC is gonna cost u... just not worth it m8

Replace the PSU, my god!I refuse to run my 8600GT off a 300W PSU, let alone a 250W with an 8800GT. Get at least a 500W, might as well go for a 700W for the small price difference and be prepared for SLI or whatever you do in the future.

power supply recommendations are based on worst case scenarios: i.e. all components drawing maximum wattage. If it works, it works. but if dependability is important to you, get a better power supply.

Have you looked at the power requirements of the AMD 4400+?It only uses 65 watts, far less than most comperably powered CPUs. This is also why it runs barely above room temp with only the stock fan under load!The miniscule amount of power the CPU draws leaves a lot more available to everything else.Also, if you overload a power supply, you'll know it because as soon as a voltage falls out of tolerance, it'll just shut off...no warnings, no beeps, just off!So unless your computer is shutting down randomly, you aren't overloading the power supply, although you might be pushing it close to it's limits which will increase the temperature inside the casing!Just an aside, I have my 4400+ running at 5500+ speed (2.75 GHz per core) without any voltage tweaking, and it's stable and barely warm even when converting Divx to DVD (95% - 100% CPU usage). The cpu is stable to about 2.80 GHz...at this speed it starts to get the odd error, so I chose 2.75 to be safe, and it never crashes under vista (that's an accomplishment on it's own on a normal system!)My 800 MHz DDR2 ram is running at 915MHz.I have had at one time a total of 13 hard disks, floppy, DVD Burner, and 7 fans in the system and all on a 350W power supply (yes, I have pictures). People seriously overestimate how much power is used in a system, and underestimate what a power supply can handle.Disclaimer: Overclocking can damage your system, don't do it.Too many hard disks can cause severe thermal problems, don't do it.