Trying to balance power consumption with performance......

[james.miller]

here's one for you guys to think about

I've currently got a modest little htpc setup (e2160 @ stock, 4gb ram, lots of drives ect) that is currently paired with an ati 4830. Reason being it was a fantastic card for the price and the power consumption was quite low - the pc draws about 111w at idle which is by no means the lowest but its fine, its mainly the chipset (ip35pro) and the cpu anyway. obviously though, load draw does shoot up some to around 170w at full tilt.

however my card seems to have a bug in the bios and doesnt drop the clocks down in idle to where they should be - my powercolor 4830 idles at somthing like 500/500 when i see 4850's idling at 150/something.... giving them both the same idle draw! the load draw isnt important really, i dont spend 24 hours a day gaming, but the idle is. my question is this: do i try to edit my 4830's bios to drop the clocks, or do i buy a faster card with the same idle draw as my current 4830, say a 4850 or perhaps the 4770...or even a 4870 if it drops to the proper clock speeds in idle? my 4830 is very impressive card, but i want more - stalker with the complete mod drops it to its knees with minimum detail

what to do people? im considering dropping an e5200 wolfy in there as well, but thats a question for another thread me thinks...

 

[TheRealDeal]

I think the cpu will be holding the 4830 back as its stock maybe try the new cpu in there and see if it makes a difference or before you do that try a little overclocking on the cpu which may defeat the purpose of trying to have a really low load on your psu. I also here the 4830 is very overclockable. If low power is the issue though then a 4770 gives you 95 percent of the performance of a 4850 and uses a lot less power.

 

[p4radox]

What's the purpose of the power saving? Lower noise, lower electricity bills, or save the planet?

You have to consider the initial financial outlay of buying a new card, and even if you sell the 4830 and buy a 4770 it'll cost you £20 or so. This will probably not be matched by the power savings over the lifetime of the card.

If you're doing it to save the planet then there's probably no point: the energy required to manufacture and ship the new card will be far greater than the energy saving over the life of the card.

Then again, if it's on 24 hours a day it might be worth it for the drop of a few Watts. Do you know what the idle consumption of your system would be with a 4770?

 

[james.miller]

well handily tom's have reviewed all threee side-by-side here - there's 8w in idle between all threee cards, 4770 being the lowest with the 4830 in the middle. however at load the 4770 draws 18w less than the 4830 which itself draws 21w less than the 4850 - 39w difference between the 4770 and 4850.


im not looking to save the planet hehe, i know that swapping hardware out to save a few watts is a fools game when you look at the cost involved, but what i can do is find the right balance. looking at those figures, another £20 or so for a 4770 doesnt look like a bad option i'd say?

I think the cpu will be holding the 4830 back as its stock maybe try the new cpu in there and see if it makes a difference or before you do that try a little overclocking on the new cpu which may defeat the purpose of trying to have a really low load on your psu. I also here the 4830 is very overclockable. If low power is the issue though then a 4770 gives you 95 percent of the performance of a 4850 and uses a lot less power.

yep, thats not a bad idea. if it does i think i will swap it out for an e5200.

 

[Meaker]

I'd flash the bios. It's not so much a bug more the fact the initial cards had high idle clocks. Grab GPU-Z save your bios. Use Radeon bios editior (RBE) to modify and then use a USB stick with a bootable copy of windows 98 (check out DFI's motherboard bioses they have links and guides) then use ATIflash to flash the bios.