8800GT VS 9800GT 65nm VS 9800GT 55nm. Any Power Advantages?

[practal]

My girlfriend discovered Spore last week and Im tired of her using my office all of the time. I have an HTPC built around Nvidia's 8200 chipset in the living room and now want to add a graphic card to keep her out of the office. I dont need anything spectacular, so I figured one of the cards listed in the title should work. I have a gaming rig and just want to add this to the HTPC to cover Spore and maybe some lan games when friends are over.

I know the 9800s are basicaly a renamed 8800gt but are there any power or cooling advantages? My board supports hybrid power but the reviews Ive read havent been spectacular. Has anyone here had better success at power saving using hybrid power? Anyone done any comparisons of the cards? If its not worth it Ill just cheap out and go with the 8800GT. Just figured Id get the pros opinion before I purchased.

[FartingBob]

If its a typical HTPC case you might need a half height card.
For spore and light gaming consider something like the 9600GT or the 3870. Both run alot cooler (and therefore quieter) than the 8800GT and should handle spore fine (even if you have to drop to medium level graphics, this is one game that isnt really effected by the quality of graphics.

[Mr. Perfect]

Supposedly the 55nm versions pull 105watts vs 110 for the 65nm version. Sparkle has an interesting passive 55nm card, but I've never seen the thing for sale. If it's the same price or lower then a regular card plus aftermarket coolers, it might be a good buy.

Best Buy has a 4580 on sale for $150 this week, which is also tempting.

[tehcrazybob]

For the purposes you described, I'd suggest an HD 4670. It's a bit slower than the cards you listed, but should have no problem whatsoever playing Spore at 720p and can probably handle it just fine at 1080p as well. Beyond that, it's great for noise. It's still pretty young and hard to find numbers for, but it's looking like 5-10 watts at idle and 30-40 watts at full load, which is considerably better than most cards on the market, including several which it outperforms. To top things off, it'll take pretty much any cooler made for the HD3000 series, so if your case is big enough an Accelero S2 will fit.

[florinp3]

I second that, 4670 would be a good choice. Have a look at these numbers: http://www.gamespot.com/features/6197428/p-4.html

[practal]

Been awhile but wanted to report back on this. I used a friends 8800Gt for some testng and measured total system draw at 72w idle and 163w load. I then tried an Asus 9800GT, supposedly 55nm, that supports Hybrid power. I measured 87w idle and 176w load with Hybrid SLI enabled. When I enable the save power feature and it drops to 27w idle. Nice little dip in idle power consumption! The card is whisper quiet, runs very cool(50c load), and I am pleased.

I do want to comment on Hybrid SLI though. My power consumption raised becuase of it, Im guessing the higher numbers with the card added is because of the IGP. Although, the power consumption is not much, it does lower my benchmark scores by a few thousand points. Im thinking it maybe downclocking the card to the IGPs core speed and thus affecting the score but Im not certain. When attempting to change the IGPs speed it doesnt seem to take affect according to GPU-Z. It also doesnt apear to be possible to change the graphic cards core or memory speeds when using hybrid sli. This doesnt bother me much but I wanted to get it out there so others could use it while making a decision. I couldnt find much info on it while deciding.

My set-up:
AMD 4850E ([email protected]/[email protected])
4GB Patriot Viper DDR2 860 4-4-4-12 1.9v
Asus 8200 mATX
Asus 9800GT Hybrid Power
Soundigo Inferno Soundcard
Western Digital 250GB 5200.2 2MB 2.5"
Raidmax Iceberg Case
Scythe Ninja Fanless
Single Scythe 120mmx38mm 1000RPM Fan for Cooling
Seasonic 300w SFX PSU (test unit bought from SPCR)