Which PCIe VGA has the lowest power consumption?

They make noise, too.

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syd
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Which PCIe VGA has the lowest power consumption?

Post by syd » Sun Sep 28, 2008 5:08 am

Hi,

I want to build a computer for server/download purposes and I can't seem findind motherboards with integrated graphics that have the features I want.
I ended up in the ASRock P45R2000 w/p45 chipset and Dual Gbit Lan.
So, I want to put a discrete PCIe VGA card there, which apparently has the lowest power consumption...
Requirements: Pixel/Vertex Shader: 3.0 a.k.a. DirectX 9.0C hardware support and to have 1 dvi port at least.

I am thinking for a 7200GS. Is this a good choice?

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Post by FartingBob » Sun Sep 28, 2008 6:00 am

I presume your not going to be gaming on this thing, so why the pixel shader and DX requirements?
Anyway, the 7200 would be a good cheap choice if you can get it passive (its not on sale at any of my usual shopping places so i dont know if its commonly sold passively or what the price would be).
Something more modern (while still very cheap and low power) would be the ATI 3450 series, which is cooled passively and about as cheap as you can get a PCI card for these days. You could undervolt/clock whatever card you do get if all its doing is desktop work to get power down even more.

syd
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Post by syd » Sun Sep 28, 2008 6:28 am

FartingBob wrote:I presume your not going to be gaming on this thing, so why the pixel shader and DX requirements?
Anyway, the 7200 would be a good cheap choice if you can get it passive (its not on sale at any of my usual shopping places so i dont know if its commonly sold passively or what the price would be).
Something more modern (while still very cheap and low power) would be the ATI 3450 series, which is cooled passively and about as cheap as you can get a PCI card for these days. You could undervolt/clock whatever card you do get if all its doing is desktop work to get power down even more.
Hi, thx for your reply!

DX 9.0 requirements are welcome, not necessary. I'd like to have Vista aero capabilities and basic 2d acceleration - if needed.

The main purpose of the card will be to simply run the server :P
That means when i setup the computer i'll have access to the server via remote desktop.
So, what i want is the lowest possible consumption...
I hadn't think of the possibility of undervolt/underclock..how can i undervolt a vga?
Also, considering i do undervolt/underclock which card do you propose?
Which card can low its power massively by undervolting/underclocking?
I can find a twintech 7200gs passive in my area.
3450 draws more power than 7200gs?

To sum up again:
a) PCIe, PCIe 1x if possible
b) passive
c) DX 9.0 support would be a welcome - not necessary.

Thanks in advance.

lm
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Post by lm » Sun Sep 28, 2008 8:17 am

These are from xbitlabs, rounded up to nearest integer, measured in DC for just the card itself at idle:

Radeon HD 3650 512MB less than 12W
Radeon HD 3850 512MB less than 14W
Radeon HD 3870 512MB less than 19W

Then we have anandtech numbers, not rounded, for full system in DC at idle:

Radeon HD 4670 67W
Radeon HD 3850 75.5W
Radeon HD 3870 80.9W
Radeon HD 4850 94.5W
Radeon HD 4870 133.5W

I'd really like to see a more complete list, but in any case the contenders seem to be any Radeon HD 3000 series model below the 3850, and any Radeon HD 4800 series model below the 4850.

I don't know anything about nvidia cards, even though my current system has one. Neither do I know anything about cards older than Radeon HD 3000 series.

I'm going to claim here that Radeon HD 4670 is the card to get.

Please give a head-to-head comparison against this card if you know of an even better choice.

syd
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Post by syd » Sun Sep 28, 2008 8:37 am

4670 is way overkill and way expensive for me....!
I want a cheap card...

jaganath
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Post by jaganath » Sun Sep 28, 2008 9:51 am

yes, the 4670 is waaaay overkill. take a look here:

http://archive.atomicmpc.com.au/forums. ... c=7&t=9354

something like 7200GS/7300GS/7300LE is perfect.

syd
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Post by syd » Sun Sep 28, 2008 10:28 am

jaganath wrote:yes, the 4670 is waaaay overkill. take a look here:

http://archive.atomicmpc.com.au/forums. ... c=7&t=9354

something like 7200GS/7300GS/7300LE is perfect.
I'm also considering 7200GS.
I think it's gonna add 8W to my system in idle.
Question is can I undervolt/underclock this to achieve further lower power draw? Like 5W or something?

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Post by dhanson865 » Mon Sep 29, 2008 6:51 am

HD4670 ______________#¦)######}| 10W-70W %
HD4650 ______________#¦)######## 10W-80W %
HD4470 ______________#¦)####| 10W-50W %
HD4450 ______________#¦)#}| 10W-30W %

HD2400 XT____________¦)¦]|' 7W-15W-19W ²
HD2400 Pro___________¦)}|' 9W-15W &

X300_________________¦)###} 8W-36W !
X300 SE______________¦)##}| 7W-30W

7300 GS _____________#¦) 9W-10W-16W ²
7300 LE______________#| 10W

FX 5700 _____________#¦)# 10W-24W ²

I don't know which of these is cheapest for you but it looks like the HD2400 XT or X300 SE is the lowest on idle power draw.

X300SE PCIe x16 is about $15 to $20 for me

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Post by smilingcrow » Mon Sep 29, 2008 9:15 am

If you get a HD 2400 Pro by a decent manufacturer so that in 2D mode the clocks and voltage are reduced you can expect it to consume roughly 7W AC more at idle than an IGP; from my own experience. It’s hard to beat that on price and power consumption.

Warning. ATI cards seem to vary a lot in idle power draw as some manufacturers don’t implement 2D mode properly. It’s really bloody annoying and makes choosing a card a bit of lottery. :x

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Post by AZBrandon » Mon Sep 29, 2008 12:22 pm

syd wrote:I'm also considering 7200GS.
I think it's gonna add 8W to my system in idle.
Question is can I undervolt/underclock this to achieve further lower power draw? Like 5W or something?
I have a 7800GT. Underclocking and undervolting it made no difference in my testing for the idle power consumption. It only made a difference once you got into 3D mode.

syd
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Post by syd » Tue Sep 30, 2008 9:33 am

smilingcrow wrote:If you get a HD 2400 Pro by a decent manufacturer so that in 2D mode the clocks and voltage are reduced you can expect it to consume roughly 7W AC more at idle than an IGP; from my own experience. It’s hard to beat that on price and power consumption.

Warning. ATI cards seem to vary a lot in idle power draw as some manufacturers don’t implement 2D mode properly. It’s really bloody annoying and makes choosing a card a bit of lottery. :x
Ah, thanks a lot for your input.
So, you think an ATi HD 2400 Pro will be a better choice than a GeForce 7200GS? Remember 7300GS (clocked higher) consumes about 9W at idle.

For HD2400 Pro, I can find a Sapphire 2400 PRO 1Gb for 20Euro. Will this card do the job? Also:
ATI SAPPHIRE HD2400PRO HM2 56MB-1GB 22E
MSI RX2400PRO-TD256EH 256MB 28E
ASUS EAH2400PRO/HTP 256MB PCI-E 30E

Which brand do you propose?

Alternatively, I can buy a Twintech 7200GS 256MB for 21E.

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Post by smilingcrow » Tue Sep 30, 2008 9:49 am

syd wrote:Ah, thanks a lot for your input. So, you think an ATi HD 2400 Pro will be a better choice than a GeForce 7200GS? Remember 7300GS (clocked higher) consumes about 9W at idle.
I haven’t tested the recent nVIDIA cards so can’t comment on them.
syd wrote:For HD2400 Pro, I can find a Sapphire 2400 PRO 1Gb for 20Euro. Will this card do the job? Also:
ATI SAPPHIRE HD2400PRO HM2 56MB-1GB 22E
MSI RX2400PRO-TD256EH 256MB 28E
ASUS EAH2400PRO/HTP 256MB PCI-E 30E

Which brand do you propose?
I’d go for Sapphire or Asus. I’d forget about the 1GB card as that much memory on a card of this class is a complete waste and will likely be slower anyway. It might well add to the power consumption also.

syd
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Post by syd » Tue Sep 30, 2008 11:22 am

smilingcrow wrote:
syd wrote:Ah, thanks a lot for your input. So, you think an ATi HD 2400 Pro will be a better choice than a GeForce 7200GS? Remember 7300GS (clocked higher) consumes about 9W at idle.
I haven’t tested the recent nVIDIA cards so can’t comment on them.
syd wrote:For HD2400 Pro, I can find a Sapphire 2400 PRO 1Gb for 20Euro. Will this card do the job? Also:
ATI SAPPHIRE HD2400PRO HM2 56MB-1GB 22E
MSI RX2400PRO-TD256EH 256MB 28E
ASUS EAH2400PRO/HTP 256MB PCI-E 30E

Which brand do you propose?
I’d go for Sapphire or Asus. I’d forget about the 1GB card as that much memory on a card of this class is a complete waste and will likely be slower anyway. It might well add to the power consumption also.



You think the ASUS or Sapphire will have 2d control?
What 2400Pro brand do you have?
When you say 7W, you mean 7W at idle? Have you checked the power draw of your 2400Pro?

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Post by smilingcrow » Tue Sep 30, 2008 11:45 am

syd wrote:You think the ASUS or Sapphire will have 2d control? What 2400Pro brand do you have?
I think it highly likely from past experience of those companies VGA cards; I don’t currently have a 2400 Pro though.
syd wrote:When you say 7W, you mean 7W at idle? Have you checked the power draw of your 2400Pro?
I tested it in an Intel G33 chipset based system and on adding the HD 2400 Pro it consumed 7W AC more at idle; this is for the whole system measured at the wall socket.

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Post by lm » Wed Oct 01, 2008 8:50 am

http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3420&p=6

They compared Radeon HD 4350, 4550, 4670 with power comsumption figures included.

But that test does not really test much, as the GPUs are in a power hungry system where their difference in power consumption is almost totally lost in the margin of error because the GPU consumption is just a few % of the whole machine consumption.

However it looks like 4350 consumes just about no power at all.

I just wish they or some other site could make a meaningfull test on low power discrete GPUs with all the relevant cards included.

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Post by smilingcrow » Wed Oct 01, 2008 9:58 am

lm wrote:But that test does not really test much, as the GPUs are in a power hungry system where their difference in power consumption is almost totally lost in the margin of error because the GPU consumption is just a few % of the whole machine consumption.
The other side of the coin is that because the power consumption is higher it very likely puts it in a flat part of the power supply efficiency range which helps to keep the comparison more accurate.

lm
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Post by lm » Wed Oct 01, 2008 11:58 am

Or rather when the difference of the systems with a 4350 and a 4550 are just under 2.4% of the total consumption of those systems, the said 2.4% can be just some fluctuation in the power usage of the rest of the system between those 2 tests.

I mean come on, the power usage of the 4350 itself could be, if it's let's say about 5W, just a bit over 3% of the whole system consumption. I think it should represent a much larger part of the whole system consumption so I could use those numbers.

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Post by davidh44 » Fri Oct 03, 2008 9:10 pm

smilingcrow wrote:Warning. ATI cards seem to vary a lot in idle power draw as some manufacturers don’t implement 2D mode properly. It’s really bloody annoying and makes choosing a card a bit of lottery. :x
Yup. My Powercolor HD3450 draws almost 20W at idle. It lowers GPU frequency at idle, but does not drop the voltage. So power usage stays high.

I'm in search of a 3450 card that does drop the voltage. I think Asus may have it, but haven't received confirmation yet.

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