Is a 512 video card too much for my Dell? my watts are 350?

Question

Is a 512 video card too much for my Dell? my watts are 350?

Answer 1

Sadly, video card vram will not dictate it's power requirements.

There's the Radeon 3850 in which it only has 256MB of VRAM yet there's a good chance your 350 power supply won't be able to take it. As it's very powerful. And thus requires a decent power supply.

PS. Video card VRAM does not dictate performance. I suggest you read reviews for the video card model you are interested in to see a rough evaluation of it's performance in regards to other video cards in it's price range.

PPS. Also some power supply makers will sort of "cheat" their power supply ratings because they will do just add all the voltages and convert it to watts. This means there will be 350w power supplies that could even run high power video cards in which some 500w PSUs cannot.

Answer 2

The 512 you are talking about is probably just the amount of memory it has and nothing to do with the power it uses.  Most likely as long as the video card does not have a additional power connector just for the card then you should be okay.  And even if it does need an additional power plug you will probably be okay.  Unless it is a very high end card then you might need more power.

Answer 3

No in short.

I have a Geforce 7900 512mb card running on a 350watt at the moment.  

It all depends on how powerful the card is, not how much memory it has :)