Video card for htpc/steambox?

E

EvilAngel

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Jan 9, 2002
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I have a HTPC connected to my 1080p TV via HDMI and i'm looking for a video card to be able to play some games with a xbox 360 controller in steam big picture.

The HTPC specs:

i3 3220 (currently using integrated video, works great for emulators and media)
P8H67-M Evo
8GB ram
Antec EarthWatts 80+ 380w PSU
120GB SSD (OS)
2x 3TB Seagate Barracuda (Media/steam)

I'm looking for a card with very low IDLE power consumption (so when I'm not actually playing the PC doesn't waste too much power, its on 24/7) and that can play games (Borderlands 2 at the moment) at 1080p with mid settings.

What would you guys recommend?
 
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Budget ?. Asus 670 mini has to be first suggestion for htpc, but you prob don't want to spend that much. Oh you only have 380 watt PSU. Don't think that will come close to handling 670.
 
I recently put a GTX 660 ti in my living room Steambox. The card takes 2 6-pin power connectors. I forget the exact power ratings for the card. I only have a decent quality 430 PSU (single rail, with good amps) in the box. Using a kilowatt, I can see that box maxes out in the low-to-mid 200's when in-game. So I feel like I've got enough power for the card.

Depending on the quality and specs of your PSU, you might be able to squeak a 660 ti in there. Not sure I'd feel comfortable, though, with a 380 PSU. Otherwise, a 7850 is a 1 6-pin card with lower power requirements that might work for you.
 
Thanks everyone.

Because of the suggestions I've been reading reviews about the Radeon HD 7750 and i think ill go with that mostly because it is supposed to be even more power efficient than intels IGP on idle, that's a big plus for me because the htpc is always on.

I can deal with 30-ish FPS on the steambox since i also have a gaming pc where i do more intensive gaming.
 
The 7750 is actually really nice. If you can accept around 30 FPS (which I find smooth enough, especially with v-sync on) and don't have unrealistic expectations you will probably be satisfied. Just make sure you get the 1GB GDDR version, not any of the DDR3 versions.

You can also find these in single-slot, low-profile versions, which is great if you have, or might move to, a much smaller case.

And if you have decent cooling these can overclock pretty well. I think mine went from a core clock of 800Mhz to around 1100MHz, and the memory was a little less, maybe 20 - 30% over stock.
 
You can easily run the HD 7790 on that PSU. It has impressive performance at 1080p:

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013...790_turboduo_video_card_review/4#.Udeqhk0iumU

And it uses a surprisingly small amount of power: HardOCP ran their power consumption tests here with a 3770k overclocked to 4.8 GHz, and the entire system only drew 220w! With your Core i3, I'd expect more like 150-160w.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013...90_turboduo_video_card_review/10#.UderGk0iumU

While the 7750 is capable, you'd be setting yourself a bit short with it. The HD 7790 is almost twice as fast:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/HD_7790_Dual-X/26.html

Also, the idle power is nearly identical!

And with discounts like these, it's a hard card to pass up! Why not drop 30 more bucks for nearly twice the performance?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202029
 
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Older generation cards would work well too. Heck, I'm using a 9800 GTX on my HTPC and it's great for watching movies and playing L4D.
 
650 ti, 7790, 7850 are all good performance for around $150. the question you need to ask yourself is not which is a little faster or uses 5-10w extra power. what you will notice the most is the noisy fan spinning up.

your quest is now to find the most efficient cooler. the quietest of those cards.

I just googled up some roundups, and: pcper and guru3d liked the msi 7790. hardwareluxx an others like the asus. I could find NO performance difference between 1gb and 2gb memory at 1080p.

msi 7790 is the cheapest and best and is a no-brainer to me after reading. best game bundle, best price, smallest, quietest, $130 before rebate... what can beat it? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127726
 
650ti boost would be way faster than 7790 and can be found for 160-170. Not sure if its out the the PSU capability tho.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/gr...-hd-7790-geforce-gtx-650ti-boost_8.html#sect0
Only 26 watts more and that's with a 3970k. Which will use more power as it will work slightly harder to push the faster 650ti boost. So I'd assume the actual GPU use almost same amount of power. 650ti boost is also 18-33% faster according to this review. Plus, from what I've heard, never settle bundle is over so 7790 comes with nothing extra.
 
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Thanks everyone, now I'm also looking at the 7790, but the product page says a 500w PSU is recommended so my current PSU falls short there, i've read of several people using the 7750 with my exact PSU.

I may seem a bit compulsive about power consumption but I'm not in the states and where i am electricity is very expensive.

Right now my HTPC is using 33w idle with integrated graphics according to my kill-a-watt.

I'm not concerned about power usage when im gaming occasionally from the couch, but since i run this box 24/7 (other services/streaming running from it) idle consumption of the card does worries me. I have a spare HD 6850 that I'm not using in it because of that.
 
assume there is no idle power difference between 7750 and 7790.

the 500W requirement you mention is wrong. you can run a gtx titan with 500W. the cards with 1 power plug will use 150W max. most are about 80W in normal use. http://tpucdn.com/reviews/ASUS/HD_7790_DirectCU_II_OC/images/power_peak.gif

the idle power concern is unwarranted. all modern cards use similarly little idle power. a gtx titan, 7790, and gt 520 all use the same power at idle, even though there is 200W load power usage between them. http://tpucdn.com/reviews/ASUS/HD_7790_DirectCU_II_OC/images/power_idle.gif
 
bAMtan2 said:
the 500W requirement you mention is wrong. you can run a gtx titan with 500W. the cards with 1 power plug will use 150W max. most are about 80W in normal use. http://tpucdn.com/reviews/ASUS/HD_7790_DirectCU_II_OC/images/power_peak.gif
Click to expand...

This is exactly why I suggested it. Your system certainly uses less than 100w at load right now, and cards in this class (from both Nvidia and AMD) would add perhaps 60-70w to that total.

The HD 7790 or the GTX 650 Ti would both be excellent card choices for an HTPC. They are roughly the same price, and the 7790 is a bit faster, but not by much.
 
They only list that 500W requirement because they have to assume that you are using some cheap, no-name PSU that doesn't output anywhere near it's advertised limit, or can't put much current on the 12V rail.

Your Antec PSU should be fine for pretty much anything that's been mentioned here. And you don't have anything else listed that requires much power, so I wouldn't worry about max power usage being too much for your PSU.
 
defaultluser said:
This is exactly why I suggested it. Your system certainly uses less than 100w at load right now, and cards in this class (from both Nvidia and AMD) would add perhaps 60-70w to that total.

The HD 7790 or the GTX 650 Ti would both be excellent card choices for an HTPC. They are roughly the same price, and the 7790 is a bit faster, but not by much.
Click to expand...
slightly faster than 650ti. But 650ti boost is 25-30% faster than both. xbitlabs shows it using about the wattage of op psu and thats with a power hungry 3970x overclocked to 4.8ghz. with your cpu and same gpu as the review your talking at least 100 watts less probably more. No question I'd go 650ti boost. your talking $30 more for 25-30% performance gain. I'd take that any day of the week.
 
Yeah if money is no object get the boost. I only suggested the 7790 because the 7750 is not a 1080p card. I didn't realize they were offering a 1gb version of the boost though!
 
I never saw a 1gb boost but its not much more than the 7790 and the 650ti boost has 2gb and a large performance gain. Even if the 2gb means nothing y not. Can't hurt.
 
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