Hello, I am looking to upgrade my aging ATI 3850 HD 512MB card to an ATI 7850. The question is mainly with the interface version I noticed on GPUreviews here. The 3850 has a v2 interface and the 7850 has a v3, would my ASUS M3A78-EM motherboard support this card properly, this I'd like to know before I make the purchase.
If you have PCI-2.0 2.1 It will run fine possible it could run on a PCI-E 1.1 it is backwards compatible and 3.0 PCI-e isn't something you will really gain from right now so you can use the card and see a big increase but if you are using a old CPU you might have bottlenecks just saying
Looking at your specs I would look into a Phenom II Black ed 965 for 95.00 us now it should support your socket if it is AM2+ so I would look into a cheap CPU upgrade and the Gpu be much better for you in the long run
All PCIeX16 version are compatible, but will run at whatever speed you board has. the PCIe 2.0 and 2.1 won't be maxed out so it would be fine.
Ahh, okay then I'm good :) Thanks again for the help, would my power supply be able to handle the new video card and an upgraded CPU?
the 7850 says minimum 500W, so you will be at the top of PSU usage. I would go with a quality 650W at least, Corsair, Seasonic, or Antec are good and stable ones.
A bigger PSU might have to wait despite I removed a 120mm fan and an old hard drive last week.
Yeah that's maybe a 15W reduction. I suspect your PSU will work unless you get some really GPU intensive games.
According to:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...D_7870/24.html
the 7850 at max. load consumed 101W. (That doesn't seem consistent with the card's power connections, though. It uses two 6 pin PCI-E power connectors, so the maximum within spec for that would be up to 225W. As a sanity check, I notice that a 7970 draws more like 280W, close to the max for one 6 pin PCI-E plus one 8 pin.)
At a guess, your 500W OCZ PSU should work OK, even if you throw in a Phenom II X4 965.
Bob you mixed up the 7870 with the 7850.
Also if that OCZ power supply is the Stealth Extreme or higher model, then it is more than enough to run a 7850 on; even if he upgrades the CPU to the x4 965.
Quote