The cost of not upgrading to a 5870

[Showboat]

One of the major selling points of the 5870 is the low power consumption while idle, if you guys are anything like me your computers are probably left on almost all the time. I thought i would take a look at how much that could cost / save you by which graphics card you currently use.

My assumptions:
Your pc is left on and idle for 365 days
1 KWH costs £0.150303 (what it costs in northern ireland)

I'll do out the first example with calcs so people can coment on what i have done and if done correctly....

According to ATI it would cost the following per card:
5870 uses 27W while idle - £35.55 per year.
So 27W x 24hours = 678 watts used per day divided by 1000 to get KWH's = 0.648 kwh
Costs 0.150303 per KWH = £0.097 per day x 365 = £35.55 per year to run.
4870 uses 90W - £118.50 per year
4890 uses 60W - £78.99

I have looked at most of the reviews and averaged out what they found each card uses when idle in their systems.

ATI -
4890 would cost an additional £45.60 per year over a 5870 (Uses on average an extra 45W)
4870x2 would cost an additional £67.80 per year over a 5870 (Uses on average an extra 68W)

nvidia
275 would cost an additional £19 per year over a 5870 (Uses on average an extra 14W)
285 would cost an additional £31 per year over a 5870 (Uses on average an extra 24W)
295 would cost an additional £68 per year over a 5870 (Uses on average an extra 52W)


I hope my calcs are correct and i hope this is useful to some people.

 

[pastymuncher]

How about load cost's? My 4870 is in a rig only used for gaming and apart from starting up/shutting down, is never idling.

 

[Showboat]

Well a 5870 under full load will use similar power (maybe slightly less) to most of the above, but how much of your day is spent with it under full load and idle, i would say me personally would run at full load for 1-2 hours a day, and idling / downloading for the other 22hours, wasting money!

 

[krooton]

What about the 5850s? Same power draw?

 

[magicroundabout]

i have 2 4870's in crossfire. assume my idle is 180w (90w each) compared to full load of a 5870 @ 160w

if i'm wrong correct me as this is an excellent excuse to the Mrs to buy one

 

[StevenRaith]

i have 2 4870's in crossfire. assume my idle is 180w (90w each) compared to full load of a 5870 @ 160w

if i'm wrong correct me as this is an excellent excuse to the Mrs to buy one

No, you're pretty much right - the 4870x2 isn't much better, pulling around 90w idle and over 200 on load. Just for the card, never mind the rest of the system

The 5870 performs as well as the 4870x2 and uses half as much power.

No 5850 power draw figures, but it seems safe to assume it will draw slightly less than the 5870 on load thanks to disabled cores and a lower clock speed, but I wouldn't expect it to be a major difference.

 

[magicroundabout]

No, you're pretty much right - the 4870x2 isn't much better, pulling around 90w idle and over 200 on load. Just for the card, never mind the rest of the system

The 5870 performs as well as the 4870x2 and uses half as much power.

No 5850 power draw figures, but it seems safe to assume it will draw slightly less than the 5870 on load thanks to disabled cores and a lower clock speed, but I wouldn't expect it to be a major difference.

so going by the maths at the top i'm using on idle £237 a year compared to £35.55 from a 5870.

on full load (from first google search result) = 430w

so assume i game on average 6 hours a day my costs would be 5.82kwh per day = £319 a year

if i'm wrong please correct me

 

[HazardO]

Personally I don't leave my machine on 24x7, it's a games machine, uses too much power and is too noisy. If I'm not using it it goes off, so the power consumption is a moot point for me. (My gaming rig probably uses less power/annum than my cheap work desktop.).

 

[magicroundabout]

it's more a hypothetical point really. some folk do leave pc's on all the time for various reasons though.

i'm only using this as a rough guide to show the Mrs i should buy one as in the long run it will save us money

 

[StevenRaith]

so going by the maths at the top i'm using on idle £237 a year compared to £35.55 from a 5870.

on full load (from first google search result) = 430w

so assume i game on average 6 hours a day my costs would be 5.82kwh per day = £319 a year

if i'm wrong please correct me

It's probably not that much - speedstep will throttle your CPU, hard drives aren't always seeking, etc - but it would probably be a noticeable chunk.

The only way to get a true measure of it would be to get a power meter, measure your load [Prime+OCCT] and idle wattage, then do the math.

 

[wolvers]

What about the 5850s? Same power draw?

Idle is the same as 5870. Load is about 18w less.

Thanks for working that out showboat. Very interesting.

Any idea how the cost compares to a GTX260 at idle?

 

[nib95]

Awesome thread. Stupidly, one of the reasons I considered the upgrade. Better performance + less running costs. Electricity is stupidly expensive in the UK now, so every little helps!

 

[magicroundabout]

It's probably not that much - speedstep will throttle your CPU, hard drives aren't always seeking, etc - but it would probably be a noticeable chunk.

The only way to get a true measure of it would be to get a power meter, measure your load [Prime+OCCT] and idle wattage, then do the math.

but that 430w is just the two cards but i get what you're saying.

 

[Laney88]

Very interesting thanx for the info.

 

[gurusan]

yay more reasons to upgrade

 

[bledd]

S3 sleep mode = ~10w for the whole system

 

[gurusan]

I leave my pc on 24/7 for torrenting and remote access so sleep is not an option.

 

[r3loaded]

Of course, you could just use integrated graphics and save even more money!!

 

[digitalis]

Old computer = download machine, surely ??

S.

 

[Ludomudo]

Great post Showboat!
My thinking exactly. My electricity bill is 60£ thats way too much. In 1 years time this baby would have payed itself by half.
Great card tbh.