ASUS NVIDIA GTX 970 with 525W PSU?

[Thewierd1]

Hello,
I have a 525w power supply that has a 6 pin +2 pin PCI power plug for a graphics card, and I am currently running a GTX550 TI.

Could I upgrade to this: ASUS STRIX-GTX970-DC2OC-4GD5 GeForce GTX 970 4GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 SLI Support G-SYNC Support Video Card - Newegg.ca

safely with this PSU?

Thanks,
Matt

 

[Shimshom]

Not totally 100% accurate but put all your hardware info into the calculator and even exaggerate a bit for headroom and it will give you an idea if you're OK, close to the limit or over it

Online Power Calculator

 

[RoasterMen]

Are you sure you want to run the GTX 970 with a Core 2 Duo? It will be a big problem for bottleneck.

To answer your question: Yes, but I might consider upgrading your entire system.

 

[Faladu]

I used this to compare that new 970 to my card, a back a generation, but still good Radeon HD 7950, it shows the watts on that 970 as 145W so a very good 525W PSU should be fine:

http://www.hwcompare.com/18062/geforce-gtx-970-vs-radeon-hd-7950-3gb/

As RoasterMen said though, depending on the system you are putting it into, the motherboard chipset + the CPU will be other big factors in performance gains, or lack thereof.

You didn't provide the model of the motherboard, so my quick comment ends here.

 

[Thewierd1]

Thanks for the answers guys. I was just wondering as I was considering upgrading as Christmas is coming near.

Would bottlenecking really be that big of an issue though? I do have 8GB of RAM that I recently upgraded to.

 

[RoasterMen]

Are you using a Core 2 Duo E8400? Because the GTX 970 can't cooperate with such processor. A Core 2 Quad will do

 

[Thewierd1]

Really? Any reason to why?

Anyway, what is the newest card that would be compatible with that CPU?

 

[RoasterMen]

GTX 970 is pretty much high end and will require minimum of Core i5 (or a Pentium G3258 but slight bottleneck)

You should go for a GTX 750 Ti or GTX 760

 

[Thewierd1]

I was thinking a 7 series then. However I'd like to keep it fairly new. Anyway a GTX 770 would work?

 

[RoasterMen]

That would still give a huge bottleneck. You'd be fine with a GTX 750 and GTX 750 Ti while you can get a slight bottleneck using GTX 760.

 

[Thewierd1]

Would that 750Ti really give me that much of a performance boost over my 550 Ti?

 

[RoasterMen]

Yes it will, the GTX 750 Ti is about level with the GTX 570