Discrete PCIe nvidia-based card with lowest power draw?

matt_garman · Post by **matt_garman** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 7:54 pm

I just did an experiment with my fiancee's computer. It's my old computer, which has a GeForce 6800 XT graphics card, fitted with a Zalman VF-700. I never needed that much graphics power, and she certainly doesn't either.

I measured her computer's AC power draw with the 6800XT: 90 W idle, 130 W loaded.

Then I swapped that card out for an old PCI Matrox Millennium I (which doesn't even have a heatsink!). Idle/load power draw: 65 W, 105 W.

Those loaded figures are for the CPU only. I noticed the Kill-a-watt read almost 150 W when the computer was idle but had a 3D screensaver going!

Point is, I'd like to replace the video card with something more appropriate. I'd use the Matrox, but it doesn't do 1280x1024. I'd prefer PCIe (though it really isn't necessary). It needs to be nvidia-based, as her computer runs Linux.

Going by heatsink size alone, this 7200GS looks like it shouldn't use too much power.

Anyone happen to know what discrete video card has the lowest power draw?

Thanks!
Matt

wumpus · Post by **wumpus** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 8:46 pm

the seven series from nVidia has an outstanding bang-per-watt ratio. The 7300 GS power draw is quite low (9w idle, 16w full load), so I'd imagine the 7200 does better.

There is a point of diminishing returns, however-- 3D performance at a below-7300 level will be in the toilet, if that matters to you.

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 12:06 am

you can generally tell what sort of power consumption a card is going to have based on the heatsink/fan used to cool it.

Cheep/Small looking passive heatsink video cards are around 40w load or lower. Once you get over 50w load you start either see'ing more beefier passive heatsinks or fans.

Still waiting for a competant upgrade to my 7600gs. Best video graphics you can buy right now with a stock passive single slot heatsink. You can get better cards that come stock passive, but they have much larger heatsinks/PCB boards that may not fit in smaller enclosures.

Redzo · Post by **Redzo** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 1:14 am

Aris wrote:Still waiting for a competant upgrade to my 7600gs. Best video graphics you can buy right now with a stock passive single slot heatsink. You can get better cards that come stock passive, but they have much larger heatsinks/PCB boards that may not fit in smaller enclosures.

I second that

The best silent card they made so far IMHO (with some 3D punch too)

matt_garman · Post by **matt_garman** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 1:22 pm

Redzo wrote:
Aris wrote:Still waiting for a competant upgrade to my 7600gs. Best video graphics you can buy right now with a stock passive single slot heatsink. You can get better cards that come stock passive, but they have much larger heatsinks/PCB boards that may not fit in smaller enclosures.
I second that The best silent card they made so far IMHO (with some 3D punch too)

Happen to know what the power draw is on the 7600GS? That's what I have in my system. It's the XFX version, with, like you said, a nice slim passive heatsink. Idles around 60 deg C. I don't do anything graphics intensive, so I don't know how hot it gets when pushed. But even idling, it's pretty hot to the touch. I don't know if it would burn me, but it's definitely uncomfortable to touch it for any length of time.

I'm really leaning towards that 7200GS for my fiancee's computer. It's cheap, and even that I believe will be overkill.

WR304 · Post by **WR304** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 1:44 pm

How about a passively cooled 7100GS card underclocked as far as it will go? (either using rivatuner in Windows or through the graphics card BIOS for Linux).

They're the cheapest Geforce 7 card you can get.

They're good enough to run Windows Vista Aero if needed and put a picture on the screen for 2D use.

They can also play DVDs acceptably if needed and have reasonable 2D picture quality.

http://www.vr-zone.com/index.php?i=4124&s=8

Don't expect any gaming performance of course but that's not really what cards like this are for.

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 3:40 pm

7600gs load is right around 50w. cant remember exactly how much, but i believe its between 40-50w. I think xbitlabs has a power consumption listing of it if you want the exact number.

vortex222 · Post by **vortex222** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 7:11 am

my 7300GS seems like a very cool running card, its passive cooled and actually impressed me with its performance for what it is.

I picked it up to be a temp replacement for when my 7900 GT was sent on warranty, and i was impressed with the gaming quality of the 7300. I ran all the same games with most of the same settings, just without FSAA and some advanced shader settings.

Mine is the Low Profile card that does not have dual monitor support however has TV output. I found the TV out to be as good as anything else i have used so now the card resides in my HTPC.

thejamppa · Post by **thejamppa** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 11:43 am

7300gs and below that uses also computer's own memory. Its not critical however. 7300gt and above have their own memory and do not use computer's own ram.

Beyonder · Post by **Beyonder** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 11:51 am

Aris wrote:7600gs load is right around 50w. cant remember exactly how much, but i believe its between 40-50w. I think xbitlabs has a power consumption listing of it if you want the exact number.

It's actually much less than this. 14W idle, 27W load was what xbitlabs measured, although worth noting is that they measured with an underclocked 7600GT. Actual 7600GS cards are undervolted as well, so it's likely those numbers are high (in particular, the load figure is probably off).

I have a passive 7600GS, and it's a great card--cool, silent, efficient, and a decent gamer as well. Were I to buy a card now, I'd probably opt for the 8600GT, but you definitely can't go wrong with the 7600GS.

autoboy · Post by **autoboy** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 7:47 pm

I'd say the 2400pro is the best low power card out there right now. Something like 9W at load.

jaldridge6 · Post by **jaldridge6** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 2:36 am

guys, he wants a really low watt card, the 7600gs is okay, but, like the last poster said, some cards are really really low. you could get a cheap low profile x300, I think it uses like 13 watts or something ridiculously low.

jojo4u · Post by **jojo4u** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 2:54 am

Considering this test, another vote for the Geforce 7200/7300.

loimlo · Post by **loimlo** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 6:52 am

matt_garman wrote: Happen to know what the power draw is on the 7600GS? That's what I have in my system. It's the XFX version, with, like you said, a nice slim passive heatsink. Idles around 60 deg C. I don't do anything graphics intensive, so I don't know how hot it gets when pushed. But even idling, it's pretty hot to the touch. I don't know if it would burn me, but it's definitely uncomfortable to touch it for any length of time.

I'm really leaning towards that 7200GS for my fiancee's computer. It's cheap, and even that I believe will be overkill.

nVIDIA 7600GS original stock heatsink is terrible. I guess they just kick out the fan and call this is a "fanless." Under room temperature 30'c, my brother's MSI 7600GS can easily reach 75'c at idle. Stress gaming would immediately reboot.

My Gigabyte 7300GT "SilentPipe", a simple heatpipe design, is running 67'c at idle. You should pay attention to manufacturer's cooling solution. It plays a big role with VGA stability.
So I have to try something effectively, cheaply. I don't wan't to invest a Arctic S2, it's too expensive for this class of cards. Finally, I attach a 120mm fan at 5V to 7600GS, wonderful result is never above 55'c at idle. My Gigabyte 7300GT with 80mm fan running at 5V is idling at 55~57'c. A small airflow would improve the temp greatly and cheaply, inaudible under most environments.

Beyonder · Post by **Beyonder** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 8:44 am

jojo4u wrote:Considering this test, another vote for the Geforce 7200/7300.

From that information, the 7600GS has almost the exact same power draw as the 7300GT (actually, slightly less at load), and it outperforms the 7300GT as well. On newegg, the cheapest passive 7300GT was about $68, while the cheapest passive 7600GS was about $72 (both of those prices required a mail-in-rebate).

For four dollars, I'd go with the 7600GS.

jojo4u · Post by **jojo4u** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 12:54 pm

Beyonder wrote: From that information, the 7600GS has almost the exact same power draw as the 7300GT (actually, slightly less at load), and it outperforms the 7300GT as well.

Well, this crumbles if you take this url in account

jessekopelman · Post by **jessekopelman** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 5:22 pm

jojo4u wrote:
Beyonder wrote: From that information, the 7600GS has almost the exact same power draw as the 7300GT (actually, slightly less at load), and it outperforms the 7300GT as well.
Well, this crumbles if you take this url in account

That's a 7300GS in that chart not a 7300GT like Beyonder was talking about. I think it is safe to assume the 7300GT draws more than the 7300GS and the original point of a 7600GS having similar draw to 7300GT likely stands.

jojo4u · Post by **jojo4u** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 9:53 pm

jessekopelman wrote: I think it is safe to assume the 7300GT draws more than the 7300GS and the original point of a 7600GS having similar draw to 7300GT likely stands.

Indeed, I was peeking at the lowest numbers instead of model numbers. Sorry.

Beyonder · Post by **Beyonder** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 9:55 am

jojo4u wrote:
Beyonder wrote: From that information, the 7600GS has almost the exact same power draw as the 7300GT (actually, slightly less at load), and it outperforms the 7300GT as well.
Well, this crumbles if you take this url in account

Not exactly. The 7300GS is quite a bit different from the 7300GT. The 7300GS is based on the G72 core, while the 7300GT is based on G73 (which is also the same core as the 7600GS and 7600GT, which sort of explains the power consumption similarities). Fill rate, bus width, vertex shader units, pixel shader units, texture mapping units, and render output pipelines in the 7300GS are substantially less than the 7300GT.

Admittedly, this is quite confusing and nvidia should have named the parts more intuitively, but a 7300GT is much more similar to a 7600GS/7600GT than it is to other 7300x cards.

One interesting thing I just noticed on that wikipedia link was an 80nm variant of the 7600GT? It'd be interesting to see the power consumption figures on that card. The performance should theoretically be identical, but the wiki article also indicate much higher memory and core clock speeds.

jackylman · Post by **jackylman** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 1:08 pm

WR304 wrote:How about a passively cooled 7100GS card underclocked as far as it will go?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the 7100 is a rebadged 6200 (i.e. it still use 110nm instead of the 90nm of the rest of the 7-series). If that's correct, a 7200 is a better bet.

EDIT: Another thing to consider is that GDDR3 uses less power than DDR2, so try and find a card with the former

matt_garman · Post by **matt_garman** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 5:01 am

I ended up buying the eVGA 7200GS linked above.

Idle, the AC power consumption of the computer went down about 15 Watts. With the GPU "loaded", AC power consumption went down 40 Watts. I put "loaded" in quotes because I don't think I really pushed the cards very hard in either test: I just ran a 3D screensaver with the highest power draw.

But it's a realistic test, since she'll never push the graphics any harder than what the screensaver does.

The heatsink on that card is small; it's hot to the touch. According to nvclock (Linux utility for tweaking nvidia cards), it's idling at 64 degrees Celsius. I know graphical processors have a higher safe thermal threshold than CPUs, but that still seems kinda high. Looking at the card "lengthwise", I could tell that there's a noticeably thick thermal pad between the heatsink and the GPU. I wonder if it would be worthwhile to buy a better aftermarket heatsink? Or maybe just re-seat the stock heatsink with Arctic Silver 5?

Anyway, I've got her computer's power consumption down reasonably low. It's an Asus A8N SLI Premium motherboard. CPU is Athlon64 X2 3800 (939), undervolted to 1.12 V. 4x512 MB RAM, 7200 GS video card, Samsung 160 IDE hard drive, Fortron-Source "Bluestorm" 400 W PSU.

Pulls just under 75 W AC when idle. (Can't remember the other figures; I'm at work now; will edit post later tonight.)

Thanks for all the feedback!

Matt

jaldridge6 · Post by **jaldridge6** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 6:33 am

Mine pulls 75 watts too on idle =) Do you use fluorescent bulbs in your house? changing my bulbs out saved a buttload of energy.

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 6:59 am

loimlo wrote:
matt_garman wrote: Happen to know what the power draw is on the 7600GS? That's what I have in my system. It's the XFX version, with, like you said, a nice slim passive heatsink. Idles around 60 deg C. I don't do anything graphics intensive, so I don't know how hot it gets when pushed. But even idling, it's pretty hot to the touch. I don't know if it would burn me, but it's definitely uncomfortable to touch it for any length of time.

I'm really leaning towards that 7200GS for my fiancee's computer. It's cheap, and even that I believe will be overkill.
nVIDIA 7600GS original stock heatsink is terrible. I guess they just kick out the fan and call this is a "fanless." Under room temperature 30'c, my brother's MSI 7600GS can easily reach 75'c at idle. Stress gaming would immediately reboot. My Gigabyte 7300GT "SilentPipe", a simple heatpipe design, is running 67'c at idle. You should pay attention to manufacturer's cooling solution. It plays a big role with VGA stability.
So I have to try something effectively, cheaply. I don't wan't to invest a Arctic S2, it's too expensive for this class of cards. Finally, I attach a 120mm fan at 5V to 7600GS, wonderful result is never above 55'c at idle. My Gigabyte 7300GT with 80mm fan running at 5V is idling at 55~57'c. A small airflow would improve the temp greatly and cheaply, inaudible under most environments.

VGA cards can run much hotter than CPU's. Last gen nvidia gigabite passive cards would run above 100C without a problem. 75c is a pretty reasonable temp for a passive video card.

Ive got a 7600gs for my main gaming system, no active cooling on it whatsoever. Sure its hot (not really sure how hot while gaming, but around 55c idle/22c ambient), but i really dont care. It works without issue's. Case airflow isnt even all that great. The only case fan is 1x 120mm scythe 1200rpm sflex at around 6v.

jaldridge6 · Post by **jaldridge6** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 7:56 am

Well, I think if you can get a cool running passive setup with minimal to no airflow then you're doing pretty dern good. I know the ATI x300 is very cool running, and the x1300. I hear the 2400pro is pretty icey as well. i have a x550 and when I open my case and touch it, its barely even warm [passive of course].

WR304 · Post by **WR304** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 9:33 am

jackylman wrote:Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the 7100 is a rebadged 6200 (i.e. it still use 110nm instead of the 90nm of the rest of the 7-series). If that's correct, a 7200 is a better bet.

EDIT: Another thing to consider is that GDDR3 uses less power than DDR2, so try and find a card with the former

It looks like you're right.

There's quite a good site here which lists which chipset the different Nvidia cards are based on:

http://www.gpureview.com/nvidia-nv44-ch ... 24c80375be

Something I meant to mention in my original post is that there are several software utilities for changing the graphics card clockspeeds when using Linux such as nvclock.

http://www.linuxhardware.org/nvclock/

.

loimlo · Post by **loimlo** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 10:16 am

Aris wrote: VGA cards can run much hotter than CPU's. Last gen nvidia gigabite passive cards would run above 100C without a problem. 75c is a pretty reasonable temp for a passive video card.

Ive got a 7600gs for my main gaming system, no active cooling on it whatsoever. Sure its hot (not really sure how hot while gaming, but around 55c idle/22c ambient), but i really dont care. It works without issue's. Case airflow isnt even all that great. The only case fan is 1x 120mm scythe 1200rpm sflex at around 6v.

The problem is, a system would reboot around ambient temp 30~32'c. No air conditioner here. Gigabyte's solution is acceptable to me, but nV's stock heatsink is no go to my brother. MSI prefers nV's original PCB/heatsink/fan ... They don't bother improving product's cooling. Stress gaming would cause a reboot.