Hello Im planning in getting a new graphics card as I was recommended earlier a geforce3 ti500 or a geforce4 ti4200 but I think im getting the ti4200 but my problem is that I think I have a very small PSU 185W so the HP website says. My current setup is 2 optical drives,1 HDD, a Floppy and this Pentium I fan that I put on my graphics card and as i recall I went to that PSU calculator and I THINK I needed a 300W PSU but im not 100% sure and as of right now I do not want to upgrae my PSU as I have better things to upgrade. So my question is will the ti4200 run on this PSU?or maybe now I should get the geforce3 ti500 as maybe it should need less power?
BTW heres what the website says on my PSU

AC input
185W max
Input Frequency: 43/66 Hz
Voltage: 120V - 230V
Maximum output wattage: 149W
Power supply output

DC Voltage
Current

+12V
4.0 A

+5V
25.0 A

+3.3V
16.0 A

-5V
0.3 A

-12V
0.5 A

Gforce3 mite be okay w/ your current PSU but as for the Ti4200...i think it needs more juice to power up that card...if you wanna upgrade yous PSU check if your case does support PSU based ATX-case...and get at least 400W

Hey evans thanks for your response. I kind of want to upgrade just the basics I.E. I already upgraded the memory and now i want to upgrade the GPU I dont wanna invest so much money on an HP. I just want to save up and build a top of a line PC in a year or so. Anyways if somebody thinks that the ti4200 could be handled please post and tell me or if not I guess ill go for the ti500 thanks.

J1mz..

Dont spent too much for a gfx card if you dont wanna play hi-end games. Worse comes to worse just get the ti500. It's still a very good card for decent games. I'd suggest you to save some money and built top-of-the-line PC. As new mobo with PCI-Express and gfx card that uses PCI-Xpress are just around the corner. So it's time so save sum bux huh...

for example...this is my system specs:

Asus A7V133 KT133A Rev 1.09
Amd Xp2000+ @ stock speed
Radeon 9800 Pro (set back to default, was OC'ed)
1GB SDRAM Samsung PC133
IBM Dekstar 120GB 7200RPM

Far Cry average : 20~40FPS (gfx oc'ed)
Call of Duty : 70~90FPS (gfx oc'ed)

that seems low compare to other people that could average 60~70 in Far Cry and 90~100 in CoD. So as I said...it's time to save up and built a hi-end-top-of-the-line PC...

good luck.
evans

Evans, Yes you read my mind I will save up for that pci express and pentium 5 coming out soon so i herd????

You have better things to upgrade? The PSU is the "life's blood" of your system...it can make you or break you. The Ti4200 eats up a lot of power & sorry to say, your PSU specs suck! Your +12v rail only has 4.0 amps!

Upgrade your PSU or you may be forced to upgrade a lot more than that. When a PSU blows, it usually takes other stuff out along with it. Make sure the amps allocated to the +12v rail are at least in the upper teens.

http://www.short-media.com/review.php?r=133

dont let your psu go down becuase it goes up in smoke and takes down the rest of your pc!!

i was round a freinds just about to fix his pc and we had the case open- we switched it on at the mains and before we knew it there were sparks comming out of the hard drive and smoke out the psu. After we reset the smoke alarm we found the whole pc was dead. LOL

Intel 800MHz,
256MB SD-RAM,
10GB yes, it gets worse...