Radeon 4850, PCI-E Question and PSU?

Question

Hi!

I'm planning on changing my graphic card to a Radeon 4850, but on my motherboard I don't have a PCI-E 2.0 slot, but a 1.1 or 1.0 one, so will the card work on my PC?

I also have 26A on the 12V rail, so hopefully that would be enough?

And finally, I heard some people saying the Radeons are a bit more unstable and more defective then GeForce's... Is this true?

Answer 1

1. yes. 2.0 cards are backwards compatible

2. dont know. recommended psu is 450

3. no its not true. right now nvidia are doing a massive recall on their mobile bpus because of a hardfware fault.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/n...

So as far as 'defective' goes, right now Nvidia is clearly the winner.

It may have been the case in the past that there were some issues with catalyst, but since ati's acquisition by amd, I think the 'quality' perception commonly levelled at ati is largely a thing of the past, as the raging success of the 4 series demonstrates.

Answer 2

2.0 cards are backward compatible with X16 slots. They want a 450watt PSU with a 6 pin providing 75watts and dont say how many amps they want:

http://ati.amd.com/products/radeonhd4800...

I wouldn't pay much heed to people saying they are unstable or more defective unless its from a reliable source. When the cards first came out some where reviewing them on newegg saying they got DOA cards but that doesn't mean they weren't trying to install it without a big enough PSU or ample ram(requires 1 MB of ram minimum). I run 2 4870s in Crossfire on an X48 Asus board, have them overclocked and have never had any stability issues ever even playing Crysis maxed out and the 4870 uses the same chipset as the 4850, the RV770. 4850s run warm so be sure and have some good airflow thru the case.

Really nice card. I feel sorry for the people who paid $369 for the Nvidia 9800GTX only to have it drop $170 in price to 199 as soon as the 4800 series ATI cards came out. Shows how much Nvidia was ripping people off  when their cards were the only game in town. Hats off to ATI for bringing video card prices back down to a realistic level.

Answer 3

It will not work,you need a PCIe 2.0 slot for that card.Why don't you get a 2600,that will work.

Radion are just as good as Nvidia-I have both and never had any trouble .

Answer 4

I know source of your answer