SPCR

I received an Asus HD 2400 Pro this morning and tested it in a Gigbayte G33M-S2 against the Intel IGP and an Nvidia 7300 LE; both cards come with 256MB RAM. Idle system power consumption shown below:

Intel IGP – 53.5W
HD 2400 – 61W
Nvidia 7300 – 64W

7.5W more than an IGP is the lowest figure I’ve personally seen for a PCIe card. When you consider the features it offers it’s a standout product.

The Asus card has a surprisingly heavy heatsink so temps were very low in 2D mode. It’s a much sturdier heatsink than that on the Leadtek Nvidia card and it is attached very securely as it has a metal bracket on the rear of the card which the heatsink is screwed to. It comes with a DVI to VGA dongle and a HD video output cable.
The GPU was running at 110 MHz and the RAM at 252 MHz at idle.

Thanks for this smilingcrow. When you say Idle do you mean desktop or with the screen shut off with the screen saver?

pod03 wrote:When you say Idle do you mean desktop or with the screen shut off with the screen saver?

At the desktop with the screen on and no screen saver active.

Great info crow.

So could I look forward to at drop in power consumption if I disable my IGP (GA-G33M-DS2R) and put in a GeForce 7300LE Turbocache? (from an "old" Dell)

While getting a boost in 3D performance?

AuraAllan wrote:So could I look forward to at drop in power consumption if I disable my IGP (GA-G33M-DS2R) and put in a GeForce 7300LE Turbocache?

No. The BIOS in my system was already set to disable the IGP when an external card is present.
It’s unlikely that an external card will currently consume less power than an IGP.

smilingcrow wrote:

AuraAllan wrote:So could I look forward to at drop in power consumption if I disable my IGP (GA-G33M-DS2R) and put in a GeForce 7300LE Turbocache?

No. The BIOS in my system was already set to disable the IGP when an external card is present.
It’s unlikely that an external card will currently consume less power than an IGP.

Arh okay. I misinterpreted your post.

I get it now

Wow that is fantastic. How much did you pay for such a card?

Also, do you happen to know how the HD2400 handles HD video as compared to the IGP?

I'm under the impression that any standalone card runs rings around integrated.

djkest wrote:How much did you pay for such a card?
Also, do you happen to know how the HD2400 handles HD video as compared to the IGP?.

I got a deal so it was only £20 shipped but it’s still usually only about £27 plus postage.
It supports decoding of all the codecs that Blu-ray and HD-DVD use and is better than the Nvidia solutions in this area.
It also supports HDCP and you can use it with a DVI/HDMI dongle if you require that. I’m not clear if it supports audio over HDMI; anybody know?
Its dual-link DVI output supports 2560 x 1600 so it’s good for 30â€

Yes it supports audio over HDMI if you have the adapter which Asus don't supply. Some other brands include this but the Asus card is cheap so you pay your money and take your choice.

As per my other posting I found my desktop idle only went up 3w on a Gigabyte 690v motherboard IGP (the 690v uses fewer watts that the 690g).

It gives pretty nice performace on low settings for Call of duty 4 on my setup. Very playable

smilingcrow wrote: It supports decoding of all the codecs that Blu-ray and HD-DVD use and is better than the Nvidia solutions in this area.

Compared to the HD 2600 the HD 2400 does not have MPEG-2 bitstream processing, frequency transform and pixel prediction or it is not activated. Also, deinterlacing is not as good as on the HD 2600. Using Catalyst 7.9, the C't still got some glitches on accelerated VC-1 decoding.

Btw, the TV-out of the HD 2400/HD 2600 are very good. The C't says, they never testet a better card.

About the absolute power consumption, look here.

jojo4u wrote:Compared to the HD 2600 the HD 2400 does not have MPEG-2 bitstream processing, frequency transform and pixel prediction or it is not activated. Also, deinterlacing is not as good as on the HD 2600. Using Catalyst 7.9, the C't still got some glitches on accelerated VC-1 decoding.

Thanks for that. I wish ATI would state clearly which video decoding features each GPU supports in the way that Nvidia do. Is this data on the ATI site?

jojo4u wrote:About the absolute power consumption, look here.

That looks promising with the HD 2600 Pro matching the HS 2400 cards at idle. I was expecting it to consume more due to being a more complicated design.

The Asus HD 2600 Pro does look worth the extra money over the 2400 Pro (£27 v £45) with dual DVI and the better HD decoder. It’s just a shame it comes with a fan. Who makes a fanless HD 2600 Pro then?

To answer my own question as I suspected Gigabyte make one – Newegg stock it at $87.

smilingcrow wrote:Who makes a fanless HD 2600 Pro then?
.

MSI does and it was tested with 11/27 W. MSI TX2600Pro-T2D256EZ.

jojo4u wrote: Compared to the HD 2600 the HD 2400 does not have MPEG-2 bitstream processing, frequency transform and pixel prediction or it is not activated.

I'm pretty sure this is not true. It has the full UVD block as the HD2600 (the HD2900 OTOH lacks this, but the new rv670-based cards will have it).

Also, deinterlacing is not as good as on the HD 2600. Using Catalyst 7.9, the C't still got some glitches on accelerated VC-1 decoding.

Yes, the post-processing features are at least partly dependent on the 3d core, and it seems HD2400 is just too slow for some of them (same story with nvidia cards, btw). I think ATI said they are trying to improve this, but it might never reach the quality of the faster cards.

The heatsink on the Asus HS 2400 Pro is so impressive I don’t see why it couldn’t handle the extra 10W at load of the 2600 Pro. Its only slightly warm to the touch at idle but the reported temp of 19C is not correct as the ambient is 21C.
I tried running 3DMark 06 but it just hangs.

Unfortunately it doesn’t see my monitor using DVI and I’m getting corruption with the D-Sub. The DVI is an issue with my monitor with certain DVI outputs but I’ll need to test the card in another system to see if the D-sub is kaput in some way.

Thanks for the info. I'm upgrading my parents PC (who do no video stuff) and the 2400 HD sounds perfect for them - lower power, no noise and directX 10.

mczak wrote:

jojo4u wrote: Compared to the HD 2600 the HD 2400 does not have MPEG-2 bitstream processing, frequency transform and pixel prediction or it is not activated.

I'm pretty sure this is not true. It has the full UVD block as the HD2600
.

This statement was made in the quite respected german written magazine C't.
To proof it, have a look at this test about CPU consumption: http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/hard ... ray_mpeg_2

jojo4u wrote:This statement was made in the quite respected german written magazine C't.
To proof it, have a look at this test about CPU consumption: ...

Maybe I'm missing something. But I thought that the 2400 and 2600 had the on-board decoding processing that the 2900 series didn't. The idea that the poeple buying the 2900 series would already have a fast CPU as well and wouldn't need to off-load video playback to the video card. Yet these charts show the 2900 doing better than the 2600 and WAY better than the 2400 on CPU usage. That doesn't make sense. And did the X1950 have this as it too did better than all of the HD series.

For instance this review of the HD2400XT and HD2600XT show them both doing well on CPU usage and much better than the HD2900 and better then an 8800GTS too.

BillyBuerger wrote:this review of the HD2400XT and HD2600XT show them both doing well on CPU usage and much better than the HD2900 and better then an 8800GTS too.

TR back that up as well http://techreport.com/articles.x/12843/9 maybe the drivers for the 2900 have improved since?

I wonder how the 3850 compares...

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3151&p=11

Schlotkins wrote:I wonder how the 3850 compares...

Anandtech measurements are quite extreme (only Pc Games Hardware showed such a HUDGE saving compared to the 8800 GT).
Drawing a conclusion from my two posts here, it should draw some watts more than a HD 2600 pro.

EDIT: link added

How much power does the 8400gs take? Is it a lot more than the 2400?

Thanks,
Chris

Thank you for the info SmilingCrow.

BillyBuerger wrote:

jojo4u wrote:This statement was made in the quite respected german written magazine C't.
To proof it, have a look at this test about CPU consumption: ...

Maybe I'm missing something. But I thought that the 2400 and 2600 had the on-board decoding processing that the 2900 series didn't. The idea that the poeple buying the 2900 series would already have a fast CPU as well and wouldn't need to off-load video playback to the video card. Yet these charts show the 2900 doing better than the 2600 and WAY better than the 2400 on CPU usage. That doesn't make sense. And did the X1950 have this as it too did better than all of the HD series.

Very obviously the HD2900 and HD2400 numbers are reversed in these... it's correct for the vc1/h.264 graphs.

mczak wrote:

BillyBuerger wrote:

jojo4u wrote:This statement was made in the quite respected german written magazine C't.
To proof it, have a look at this test about CPU consumption: ...

Maybe I'm missing something. But I thought that the 2400 and 2600 had the on-board decoding processing that the 2900 series didn't.

Very obviously the HD2900 and HD2400 numbers are reversed in these... it's correct for the vc1/h.264 graphs.

The editor assured in the comments that the numbers are correct. He also telephoned with AMD and they didn't complain about the article. Face it: The HD 2400 sucks at MPEG-2.

The Asus HD 2400 Pro was returned due to producing visual artefacts and they didn’t have a replacement so I ordered a PowerColor HD 2600 Pro SCS3 256MB instead.
Unfortunately it idles at full speed unlike the HD 2400 Pro so the power consumption is higher. I wonder if this limitation is due to a poor design of the board or is a limitation of the chip. Does anyone have a HD 2600 Pro that idles at a low speed?

Intel IGP – 53.5W
HD 2400 Pro – 61W
Nvidia 7300 – 64W
HD 2600 Pro – 70.5W

The GPU runs at 600MHz and the memory at 400MHz (DDR2).
The heat-pipe does a good job of cooling and it idles in the high 40s. It is a two slot design though and may well be over-kill for such a low power GPU.

jojo4u wrote:Face it: The HD 2400 sucks at MPEG-2.

It seems as if all the HD 2xxx series are poor at MPEG2 HD which I didn’t think mattered until I recently learned that the majority of Blu-ray discs are still using MPEG2 which really surprised me.

smilingcrow wrote: so I ordered a PowerColor HD 2600 Pro SCS3 256MB instead.
Unfortunately it idles at full speed unlike the HD 2400 Pro so the power consumption is higher. I wonder if this limitation is due to a poor design of the board or is a limitation of the chip. Does anyone have a HD 2600 Pro that idles at a low speed?

The only occasion I came accross a higher 2600 pro power draw was the IS HD2600Pro IceQ Turbo card here and here (Leistungsaufnahme). In the first article the MSI RX2600Pro - T2D256EZ/D3 and Asus EAH 2600 Pro HTDP/256M/A where fine.

jojo4u wrote:The only occasion I came accross a higher 2600 pro power draw was the IS HD2600Pro IceQ Turbo card here and here (Leistungsaufnahme). In the first article the MSI RX2600Pro - T2D256EZ/D3 and Asus EAH 2600 Pro HTDP/256M/A where fine.

Thanks for that. I went to buy the article that you linked to below as it sounds very detailed but they don’t take Paypal unfortunately.
The MSI card is preferable to me as it is passively cooled and I can use it straight out of the box.

jojo4u wrote:German printed magazine testet HD 2400 and HD 2600 cards in issue 22/07. Products here. Power consumption was very good:

idle / 3DMark 06, in Watt

HD 2600 XT (DDR3): 19-23/36-50 W (Sapphire Ultimate is best both times)

Did they test any passive 2600 XT cards that had low idle power consumption? I have my eye on the MSI and Gigabyte cards.

smilingcrow wrote:I went to buy the article that you linked to below as it sounds very detailed but they don’t take Paypal unfortunately.

Did they test any passive 2600 XT cards that had low idle power consumption? I have my eye on the MSI and Gigabyte cards.

No further tests as I'm aware of. I could manage a scan, but you'l have to wait 3 days.

jojo4u wrote:No further tests as I'm aware of. I could manage a scan, but you'l have to wait 3 days.

Thanks for the data; I assume its okay to post it here:

Power consumption is card only. Numbers are idle/3DMark06 Canyon default.

Club 3D HD2400Pro Passive Cooling
10/16 W - passive
MSI RX2400Pro - TD256EH
12/15 W - passive

GBT GV-RX24T156HP (Radeon HD 2400 XT)
11/22 W - passive
Sapphire HD2400XT Lite Retail
11/20 W - passive
GeCube HD 2400 XT L2-D3(R)
13/21 W

Asus EAH 2600 Pro HTDP/256M/A
11/25 W
MSI RX2600Pro - T2D256EZ/D3
11/27 W - passive
HIS HD2600Pro IceQ Turbo
16/29 W

Sapphire HD2600XT
19/36 W - passive
HIS HD2600XT Zalman
23/50 W
HIS HD2600XT IceQ Turbo
23/50 W
GBT GV-RX26T256HP-B (Radeon HD 2600 XT)
35/40 W - GDDR4

I had a reply from PowerCooler about the high clock speeds at idle;

“I am sorry to let you know that we do not have Bios firmware to drop the clock speeds at idle all of our HD2600 Pro video cards RAM clocks run at full speed all the time thank youâ€