Radeon HD 6850

metamaycry said:

wow u u sure bob that its 500 watts ive seen many of my mates run that card with a 350 watt supply

I'm just quoting Sapphire.

500W seems excessive, as the card can't draw more than 150W if it stays within the PCI-E specs (75W through the slot, 75 more for the 6 pin PCI-E connector). However, it may cover poor 500W PSUs; you may be able to get away with less if the supply is any good (adequate current on the +12V rail). 300W seems a little dicey, though.

For what it's worth, I recently installed this card (XFX branded) in my Dell XPS 8300, which has a 460w power supply. It took one 6-pin molex connection. No problems so far, including running Crysis 2. But I haven't stress tested it.

Maguscreed said:

The load power draw of a 6850 is a lot closer to 230...
Radeon HD 6850 Power Consumption and Thermals | bit-tech.net

Only a week late with this, but...

That's a system total ("watts at socket"), not the graphics card alone.

Maguscreed said:

lol well more power to you think you can run a modern system with a gaming level graphics card on 230 watts.
My personal experience dictates that is completely impossible.
In fact even without the graphics card my system in the main room won't even post with a 350 in it.
...and it's a old socket 939 amd.

Sounds like a lousy 350W supply. (I think I used a Tagan 480W on my old S. 939 system, though. It's still in use by a friend.) I don't know what the required PSU rating would be for a system with a maximum power consumption of 230W. I've not done any experiments to match minimal PSUs to PCs.

Graphics card power consumption:

Imageshack - gfxpowerchartbybrandgen.png

This puts a 6850 at 125W max. (Nominal maximum for a card with a single 6 pin PCI-E power connector: 150W.)

The I7-965 used in the BitTech review is rated at 130W. That's 255W combined. Assuming an 80% electrical efficiency, that would be about 320W wallplug. The 230W number is pretty low.