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The cost of not upgrading to a 5870

get a low powered server/laptop to do the job

Yup, an Acer Revo wouuld make a perfect torrent and VNC/RDP server - low power usage, enough grunt to shuffle packets around and Atom has long been a decent platform for Linux if that's your thing - although it might be worth checking the Ion compatibilty with Linux beforehand.
 
I don't have the space and don't want to be running wires everywhere, which leaves me with slow wireless.
 
Has it occurred to anyone that the money you spend to upgrade to it negates any savings made over the time you are likely to have it ?
 
Can't speak for anyone else but to me these figues act like a very slow burning rebate :)

Taking £50 or so off the price of the 5850 takes it from a solid card to a great deal.

Vaguely on the same vein, if you overvolt the cards to overclock and thus draw more power can you safely toggle this on and off or would the hardware dislike changing periodically?
 
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 :(
 
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

Well I leave my 4870 on for abou 18 hours a day. £29 per quarter is a horrifying amount.

This I will NOT show her indoors!!
 
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?

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.
 
this is the main reason that I upgraded to a 5870 because of power consumption.

I'm running crossfire 4890 atm, just imagine how much power these 2 babies consume.

my xfx 5870 is arriving later today
 
and my PC is loaded most of the time which is about 700 watt :eek:

about 400-500 ideal I belive

och
 
Heh how times change, I'm so glad to see a lot of people paying attention to their PC's running costs £££ :D

To anyone having problems doing the maths it's quite simple. All you need is some way of measuring the wattage your computer is drawing (power monitor) and a copy of your electric bill where the kWh cost is listed.

What is a kWh? . . . A kWh or kilowatt-hour is the rate of electrical usage. It is a measure of kilowatts used per period of time (1 hour) i.e a hundred watt light bulb uses 100 watts over the course of an hour, if left switched on for ten hours it will have used one kWh (100x10) . . . easy huh! :)

I pay approx £0.14p per kWh so each single watt left running 24/7(365) costs me £1.22 annually lol, doesn't sound much eh just one watt but then bare in mind there are over 61 million people residing in the UK that one single watt used 24/7 costs nearly £75 Million pound (based on kWh cost of £0.14p)
Has it occurred to anyone that the money you spend to upgrade to it negates any savings made over the time you are likely to have it ?
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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