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The cost of not upgrading to a 5870

Showboat said:
Lol after 3 years i've just noticed the standby option on my own PC.... goes in and resumes in 5-10secs.... -1 for the upgrade :(
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On standby you cant download, you cant watch a movie. My computer is not just for games.... Its a multimedia center. And I can do everything better and cheaper than before and save cash.
 
Sasahara said:
It's should have been 0.97p. So the . was in the wrong place or a £ should have been used. :)

236.52 kw/hrs = £35.55 per year
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So this figure is correct or is £355.50 the correct cost/year?

If £355.50 is correct, anyone know how to tamper with electricity meters? (just messin)
 
Big.Wayne said:
In a worst case scenario you may not financially benefit but you are certainly reducing the size of your Carbon Footprint for no cost! :D
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Not really. Most of the carbon footprint comes from making and shipping the thing in the first place. In terms of carbon footprint, it's almost always best to just stick with what you have, until such time as the carbon saved over the lifetime of the new product vs. the older product outweighs the carbon cost of making the new one, which I imagine would take a while, longer than most people on here keep a graphics card anyway.
 
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Finally people are starting to realise why I was glad to go from 320watt idle (q6600) to 160watt idle (i7 860)! Its an amazing difference and has really turned this into a 24/7 rig.

gurusan said:
I leave my pc on 24/7 for torrenting and remote access so sleep is not an option.
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I do agree with this, I tried having two machines, a secondary which was a zotac ion board, but I didn't like having data everywhere and having 2 machines and switching msn when i turn one off etc.

Though gurusan, you could look into W.O.L/Magic packet to wake your pc from sleep remotely.

Personally (if my main rig has nothing to do I do turn it off) I SSH into my webserver (some mini-ATX board ~30watts) and send a wol request to my main rig from there.
 
Just worked out my load cost's based on my own electricity prices.

Rig in siggy would cost me £52.56 a year to run at full load (274w). Usual load is more like 220-240w so it's actually a bit cheaper.

GP/internet pc cost's me £21.90 a year to run at it's usual load of 94-100w.

Did'nt see any point in working out idle prices as the pc's are there to be used not switched on doing nothing. This is all a bit of a moot point for those with power guzzling overclocked quads though. :p
 
I turn my computer off whenever i'm not using it, don't see any reason to leave it on.
 
Rroff said:
IIRC the 260GTX depending on model is rated for 33-40watt idle - IIRC last time I did the maths my 65nm one worked out at 27.5-28watt and the 55nm one at ~25watt.
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I thought it was quite good but I didn't realise that it's that low.

I wonder if the 5850 that I've ordered will still down clock at idle with 2 monitors connected, as the 260 that I have doesn't.
 
I don't leave mine on ethoir, when I m not using it for longer peroids of time...althrough some people fold on thier PCs
 
Psy-Blade said:
A lot of people use their pc's for downloading as well as remoting into from othe rpeoples houses/work. I also use mine to stream my media to my phone/other pc's I'm at.
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I meant for myself, obviously if you're folding or downloading something that could be done by the morning, then you may leave it on if your computer is quiet enough.
 
I've been debating if I should upgrade to a different board/setup because at the moment my DFI board can't overclock(very far) with the multipliers and northbridge multiplier locked with cool and quiet enabled.

For max clocks on my INtel quads you would really want to disable speedstep for stability, but 98% of max clocks usually worked fine with speedstep enabled meaning far lower idle power.

Been slowly reducing my PC power usage, and was the main reason for swapping a 4870x2 for a 4890.

Some of the numbers, afaik, are rather incorrect though, a 4890 was supposed to use 60W at idle, but afaik because the memory couldn't be underclocked without the screen flashing it was never used in drivers so it really uses 80-90W.

If you enable your own profiles and set memory clock settings at minimum which is 500, down from 950ish my power usage drops 20-22W instantly. GPu clocks from stock to 240mhz, does nothing at all for reduced power. The other main power saving I assume from the new cards is reduced voltage on memory at lower clocks and also lower stable clocks on both memory and gpu helping also.


THing is, if you wait 3 months to buy a 5870, you'll save £50-80 on the cost of the card, and still get 3/4 of the savings in the next year for power, saving you an awful lot more overall.

Next gen should get even better as better features were enabled this time around, but no powergating tech like a current CPU will have. At idle, doing desktop work you could easily turn off all but one cluster of SP's aswell as only have them run at 150mhz, which would take power usage down towards intergrated graphics power levels.

Its going to happen purely because AMD/Intel are moving gpu's onto the cpu die, where they will need powergating options, which will simply crossover and be used in their discrete products also.
 
Psy Blade can you link your rig, i will be upgrading in the next 2-4 weeks and would like advice on stuff that runs on low juice while idle
 
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