Upgrading 4870, power consumption?

[Sunnydaylad]

I've been trying to find out what the power consumption is on a Radeon 4870, idle and load, but there's so much conflicting information it's hard to know.

Not expecting exact figures, ball park figures would do, give or take 10 watts. But the figures are wild, some say about 60 watts idle, others say 150 idle, some say 150 load and others say 230 load. All very frustrating, I wish the people who make these cards make finding that information easier.

So if I upgrade from a 4870 to a 6870, would I be looking at' even more watts usage? If so, about how many watts idle and load does the 6870 use?

Maybe power consumption isn't important to some people, but to me it is, electricity pricing going up year by year, then new cards come out demanding yet more watts.

I'd be quite happy to pay quite a high price for some of these cards nowadays to get the best performance, but when I also factor in their power consumption usage I see it is simply not worth it.

And where's it's going to stop? In 5 years time will be seeing cards with 300 watts idle? Who on earth is going to be able to afford running that kind of thing 12 hours a day 7 days a week.

 

[synixx]

A lot of reviews include the entire system in their idle power consumption so that's why the results are very different. Also the 6870 uses less power than the 4870 iirc.

 

[Tealc]

The 4870 wasn't very good for power consumption at idle due to high memory clockspeed. Today's cards idle at <20w for single screen where the 4870 was 60+. Nit sure about load power but maybe 160w for the 4870. The 6870 is lower power for both idle and load.

 

[Sunnydaylad]

Thanks for the info, surprised the 6870 has lower load power though, very tempting. Would the 6970 use a lot more?

Which 6870 should I get? Higher clock speed isn't important, more concerned with noise+watts. I found the Sapphire Radeon 4870 a bit noisy on load so looking for some other make or fan combo.