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4890 To Many Watts ?

S

shawnmramsey

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 28, 2009
Messages
173
Title Edit: The 4890 is using too many watts for the price I'm paying for electricity. (that should make some of you feel more warm and fuzzy inside, while still getting the same point across ;)

I recently moved to PR, and electricity is damn expensive here. I never thought twice about the power consumption of the the video card until now, and it is way to power hungry. I need a card that will give me about the same performance as the 4890 but at a much lower wattage. I would not not like to spend any more money on it as I would like to do a direct replacement.


Question: What would be a great alternative so I can still have a great gaming experience at a much lower wattage. If I can, I would like to come out of the situation without spending any money at all, a nice wash out would be nice, or even saving some money. Mainly I am looking for a card with a great idle, as much of the time I will just be doing regular stuff, but also would like to still get some good results encoding. ATI or Nvidia really does not matter. As long as it will get along well with the rig in my sig,

BTW: I will be selling my current 4890.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Shawn
 
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How much you spend on a new card will be more than the difference between what your card uses and the new one.
Edit: and I think its hilarious that you misspelled every single word in your title.
 
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http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=615&card2=608

The 5770 has the same pixel fill rate, same texture fillrate and dx11 shaders, but it has lower memory bandwidth. It uses almost half of the electricity of a 4890.

In the US the 5770 goes for ~$160 new. The 4890 sells for the same amount used. On ebay the highest buy it nows are at $190 from what i can see. This doesn't mean they will sell, but it's food for thought.

You should not have too much difficulty selling a 4890 for $150, so a direct trade with the right person seems like a possible option.
 
HD 5770 uses 15w idle and 108w at load.
HD 4890 uses 60w idle and 190w watts under load.

The difference between the two is the difference between turning off one light bulb while you play games.
@novadaemon, nobody is buying 4890s If people have $150, they are buying 5770s. Just because they are on ebay doesn't mean that they sell.
 
Yup, 5770 all the way. Nothing comes close to that performance with power constraints.

Ha, this is the first reasonable request for power limitation of a stationary computer I've heard of outside a data center. :D I hope the change in scenery is worth it!
 
If you want performance your going to always usually have to sacrifice power consumption.
 
lloose said:
HD 5770 uses 15w idle and 108w at load.
HD 4890 uses 60w idle and 190w watts under load.

The difference between the two is the difference between turning off one light bulb while you play games.
Click to expand...


I believe those are TDPs. Here is a comparison from a site that does the best power measurements on videocards:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/gpu-power-consumption-2010_3.html


Lightbulbs come in different wattages so that doesn't help much. Using the example from xbitlabs, the difference (at peak) while gaming is about 113W per hour.
 
You may want to hold until the 6000 series. One of the rumored/hinted at improvements is efficiency.
 
@lloose, the difference between turning a light bulb on or not means nothing, if I could I would turn them all off.
@Conker, true, I'm asking for the best mixture of the two.
@limitedaccess, thanks for the info ill research that.

Thank you everyone for the links and info.
 
The people that want a 4890 at this point are the ones who might consider a Crossfire with their already in-hand 4890......and I would guess there are some of those people around.
But you probably won't get $150 anymore.
 
I'm hoping my brother might want it he is running one now, just not sure if his psu will handle both. And I have been getting some good OC number from this card.
Edit: Just hope it arrives, it's being shipped from Vegas now, and was in route (probably on the ship) while earl hit, and we got battered pretty good here in PR. It was scheduled to be here on the 24th so fingers crossed.
 
OMG, .50 a KW wow, its about .21 to .23 a KW here, but it is some dirty ass power. And It cuts out about twice a week so I end up running on a generator for about 10hr a week. Thank god for UPS's. And when we get a storm the prices for diesel skyrocket.

Edit: I'm use to paying 10-11 cents a kwh in vegas with no pool so its hitting me hard.
 
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GotNoRice said:
Also I'm curious how much you are paying for power in PR, and if it beats the $.50/kWh we get screwed with having to pay here in California.
Click to expand...


Do you realize that those are tiered rates?

No resident will pay $.5/kWh. Worst case scenario is that you will pay that rate for a portion of your use. If you are doing that in a house, you should be able to afford it because you are likely growing weed. If you are growing that much weed and can't keep up with the bills, you suck, find another career.
 
:( @ NYC
Texas $.11 a kwh
Coned (local company) $.09 kwh delivery charge
:D time to get rid of my 4890
 
needmorecarnitine said:
Do you realize that those are tiered rates?

No resident will pay $.5/kWh. Worst case scenario is that you will pay that rate for a portion of your use. If you are doing that in a house, you should be able to afford it because you are likely growing weed. If you are growing that much weed and can't keep up with the bills, you suck, find another career.
Click to expand...

I guess you live by yourself in an apartment or something? It's not exactly hard to blow past 1000kWh in a month when you have a whole family living in a house and everyone has their own computer, TV, etc. Add in an air conditioner, microwave that gets used often by lots of people, etc and it adds up quick. I had entered 2700kWh in that picture because that was a figure from an actual bill. My neighbor's is even higher but he has a 2nd fridge and a pool.

Actually already had this discussion in this thread: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1502897 No reason to derail this guy's thread.
 
GotNoRice, what are you, Asian? How many people in your family? 18?

I live with 2 other people. House, everyone has their own computer, many tvs (I don't have one though), no AC, microwave gets little use. We pay less than $100 a month usually. This is with Southern California Edison.

Last time I was living on my own it was in a house with pool and I was growing. Bills were less than $600 a month and that was with two 1000W lights running 12 hours a day. Do you guys leave every single appliance on 24 hours a day?
 
needmorecarnitine said:
GotNoRice, what are you, Asian? How many people in your family? 18?
Click to expand...

No but grats on being a racist asshole.

I live with 2 other people. House, everyone has their own computer, many tvs (I don't have one though), no AC, microwave gets little use. We pay less than $100 a month usually. This is with Southern California Edison.

Last time I was living on my own it was in a house with pool and I was growing. Bills were less than $600 a month and that was with two 1000W lights running 12 hours a day. Do you guys leave every single appliance on 24 hours a day?
Click to expand...

That $1000+ bill was a summer month when it was really hot and we were running the AC a lot. Normal bills are $600 or less, but even with a $600 bill, more than half of that is coming from Tier5 at $.50/kWh.
 
lloose said:
The difference between the two is the difference between turning off one light bulb while you play games.
Click to expand...

Stick a 100W space heater in your case, then.:D

It'll be the same thing, won't it?:p

There is more to power draw than "how much will my PSU be loaded" woo hoo.

Side note: one HD5870 doesn't really heat up a 20x20x10 room (feet). Two HD5870, even underclocked to HD5970 speeds (since I only have one 1080p monitor), will heat up my room. Even at idle speeds (since I rarely play games).
 
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