Report: the true power consumption of 73 graphics cards

[Mechromancer]

One thing I found really odd about a 4870 1gb (my card)

2D idle -> 62.2W
Blu-Ray Playback -> 48.3W

More work with less power?

Are you running Vista or 7? What you think is 2D may actually be 3D Aero running. If not, then that is really a mystery.

[sbattosai]

One thing I found really odd about a 4870 1gb (my card)

2D idle -> 62.2W
Blu-Ray Playback -> 48.3W

More work with less power?

They say in the text that it is a BIOS problem, the Gigabyte card has wrong 2d frequencies... just read the text

[Lmui]

They say in the text that it is a BIOS problem, the Gigabyte card has wrong 2d frequencies... just read the text

Thanks. I just looked at the graphs, not the text like the lazy person I am xD

[Behemot]

behardware is the english version of Hardware.fr which is the author of the original article, they also have a couple of other nice Huge round-up test. They might just have them took a bit long to translate it to make sure very word is correct and there is no mistakes.

I know. This not change the fact this is nothing really new, graphs were there for the whole time. This should have been posted in the original thread, not in a separate one.

[snoro]

I know. This not change the fact this is nothing really new, graphs were there for the whole time. This should have been posted in the original thread, not in a separate one.

oh ok sorry, i misunderstood you, i tought you were saing something like: what a bunch of idiot we already had those graph months ago(sorry for that, i am in paranoia mode since the whole fermi thing over here with everyone bashing something that is not a failure). But yeah, if movieman or any mod or admin could merge that thread with original, that would be better.

[MirageSys]

Its a bit odd that the GeForce250 1gb takes less power than the 512mb in most tests.....

Not that I'm disputing the results of the test, I realize that the cards do have slight variations between each other and companies do bin products.

[damha]

99% of the time more memory comes at the expense of lower clocks = lower power consumption. And with low end cards like this their bottleneck is rarely ever RAM.

[SamHughe]

Boy. I am glad investing in that 5450 ddr3 for my htpc now.

[rado992]

Its a bit odd that the GeForce250 1gb takes less power than the 512mb in most tests.....

IIRC that's because the 1GB PCB of the GTS250 got a redesign while for the 512MB version nv let vendors simply use the old PCB from the 9800GTX+, which happens to be slightly less power efficient than the redesigned one. Hope that clarifies the doubts.

[-Acid-]

Scary to think that my crossfire 2900xt's are still the most power hungry single ati gpu's 183 watts each......
Dread to think what my volt modded 1.35 950 core 980 ram ones are suckin up !!!!


fermi is nvidias version of R600

Good thing about hot, volt leaky hardware is once cooled well they clock like mad !!!!!!!

[Frodin]

They say in the text that it is a BIOS problem, the Gigabyte card has wrong 2d frequencies... just read the text

One thing I found really odd about a 4870 1gb (my card)

2D idle -> 62.2W
Blu-Ray Playback -> 48.3W

More work with less power?

Like others have stated, there is something funny going on with ATI Powerplay, and it's not just the Gigabyte card. My HIS HD 4870 1024MB actually draws less power if I play an HD video that is accelerated by the GPU compared to idle/2d, this is because 2d mode has a higher memory clock (same as 3D or full speed) than "HD" mode. This prevents screen flickering when changing states rapidly, but results in higher power consumption. Sometimes I leave a muted HD video rolling in the background when I leave the computer, it results in an about 20w lower power draw than "idle".

[strange|ife]

I have to ditch this 4870 512MB soon just for my power bill lol. This thing is like a 6000 SUX, really fast, but gets really bad gas mileage.

yeah have the same card. Been holding off on a 5850 until Fermi hits, which it looks like will be this week according to egg. Hopefully ATI cards will lower down a bit.

[Olivon]

Update :

- HD 5750
- HD 5770
- HD 5850 (single and Xfire)
- HD 5870 (single and Xfire)
- HD 5890

- GTX 470
- GTX 480 (single and SLi)

Infrared thermography from Hardware.fr (french)

[h0bbes]

Pages 29 and 30 have a summary of the results (in case you are not bothered to look through the whole article)