Dont understand...hd4850 10w idle @ 68c

They make noise, too.

Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee

snq
Posts: 99
Joined: Sun Feb 25, 2007 6:27 am
Location: Sweden

Post by snq » Sun Jun 22, 2008 1:33 am

I'm really curious about this card :)

I'm looking for something to replace my 8800GT, the girlfriend needs a new gfx card (she has a couple months old 8800GT now but it's noisy as hell and impossible to shut it up because of no fan control on this particular card) and I figured I'd put my quiet 8800 in her system and get something new for myself.
The 4850 is already for sale here since friday, but I'd really like to know how silent it is before I start ordering stuff. But if this really fits that is what I'll be using, right now I'm only cooling the CPU with my reserator.

thejamppa
Posts: 3142
Joined: Mon Feb 26, 2007 9:20 am
Location: Missing in Finnish wilderness, howling to moon with wolf brethren and walking with brother bears
Contact:

Post by thejamppa » Sun Jun 22, 2008 2:16 am

According most tests fan acts pretty much like HD 4850, its barely audiable in Idle and rises slowly in stress. Very quiet for stock, albeit also hot like HD 3850 like I have. I haven't have troubles with HD 3850 in stock cooling in 3 cases I've used it. It runs bit warm but nothing dangerous.

Tephras
Posts: 1140
Joined: Tue Sep 07, 2004 11:03 am
Location: Europe

Post by Tephras » Sun Jun 22, 2008 4:27 pm

Sendorm wrote:Tephras, that was really funny and to the point, thanks.

Can you get a reading of the wattage?
Nope, those temp readings are not mine, that picture was posted in another forum.

andyb
Patron of SPCR
Posts: 3307
Joined: Wed Dec 15, 2004 12:00 pm
Location: Essex, England

Post by andyb » Mon Jun 23, 2008 4:09 pm

There's almost always a video card refresh around Dec/Jan. I am going to bet that's when the process switch will occur. Either then, or maybe Oct/Nov. Depends on when Nvidia decides to attempt the 280 on 55nm. Maybe Ati would react and do the same, only with 45nm? They'll do it, and they'll do it quick if the yields are better and cost is lower.
Please give me a couple of months notice on this will, because I read the http://www.theinquirer.net/ and those bastards are rarely wrong on dates or figures, or anything else, and I dont work for them.


Andy

davemuk
Posts: 30
Joined: Sun Jun 10, 2007 11:27 am

Post by davemuk » Tue Jun 24, 2008 12:43 pm

According to this post, the idle freq. should be 160mhz. I'm guessing this would drop the power usuage dramatically.

smilingcrow
*Lifetime Patron*
Posts: 1809
Joined: Sat Apr 24, 2004 1:45 am
Location: At Home

Post by smilingcrow » Tue Jun 24, 2008 1:42 pm

davemuk wrote:According to this post, the idle freq. should be 160mhz. I'm guessing this would drop the power usuage dramatically.
Interesting, although it shows that the Voltage is the same so I wonder how significant just dropping the clock speeds will be?

ryboto
Friend of SPCR
Posts: 1439
Joined: Tue Dec 14, 2004 4:06 pm
Location: New Hampshire, US
Contact:

Post by ryboto » Tue Jun 24, 2008 4:36 pm

smilingcrow wrote:
davemuk wrote:According to this post, the idle freq. should be 160mhz. I'm guessing this would drop the power usuage dramatically.
Interesting, although it shows that the Voltage is the same so I wonder how significant just dropping the clock speeds will be?
That's exactly what I said over at XS regarding powerplay and the 3870, but members started berating me for not knowing that power draw with the HD3800 series scales more with clockspeed and not with voltage. I asked them to prove it, and they showed me a link to power draw increasing linearly with clockspeed at a static voltage. I asked them why they didn't show multiple voltages, and they said that their results were all they needed for confirmation. Maybe they were on to something though, and that's why the vgpu doesn't drop?

Luminair
Posts: 223
Joined: Wed Mar 21, 2007 10:45 am

Post by Luminair » Tue Jun 24, 2008 6:27 pm

Power consumption of the 4850 and 4870: http://www.expreview.com/topic/2008-06- ... 73_13.html

not bad, but not impressive. Nvidia probably does it better this generation, with higher load power but lower idle power.

MoJo
Posts: 773
Joined: Mon Jan 13, 2003 9:20 am
Location: UK

Post by MoJo » Tue Jun 24, 2008 9:44 pm

I think maybe the idle power consumption of the 4870s are at the moment limited by driver issues. Hopefully ATI will get it down to more reasonable levels soon.

ntavlas
Posts: 811
Joined: Mon Jul 16, 2007 2:35 pm
Location: Greece
Contact:

Post by ntavlas » Tue Jun 24, 2008 11:57 pm

Interesting link davemuk.

If you look at both bios descriptions you can see that three voltages are listed: 1.046, 1.084 and an unspecified vid1 (I imagine it`s the max setting).

So the high idle consumpion could be a bios issue after all?

Radiance
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue May 08, 2007 2:55 pm

Power consumption in IDLE

Post by Radiance » Wed Jun 25, 2008 12:21 am

Just to redress the power consumption in IDLE for all commenters here who don't want to read the whole thread:

Current drivers are *not yet* supporting the Powerplay power-saving technology in the R48xx cards.
This explains the high idle comsumption in all these "day one" tests.

We will have to wait till ATi bring out the new drivers, then we should see the amazingly low idle consumptions they have promised us. So please people, have a little more patience before you judge.

rpsgc
Friend of SPCR
Posts: 1630
Joined: Tue Oct 05, 2004 1:59 am
Location: Portugal

Re: Power consumption in IDLE

Post by rpsgc » Wed Jun 25, 2008 1:39 am

Radiance wrote:Just to redress the power consumption in IDLE for all commenters here who don't want to read the whole thread:

Current drivers are *not yet* supporting the Powerplay power-saving technology in the R48xx cards.
This explains the high idle comsumption in all these "day one" tests.

We will have to wait till ATi bring out the new drivers, then we should see the amazingly low idle consumptions they have promised us. So please people, have a little more patience before you judge.
Eh :) It seems I got it right
viewtopic.php?p=419016#419016

Sendorm
Posts: 56
Joined: Wed Jun 08, 2005 10:21 pm

Post by Sendorm » Wed Jun 25, 2008 3:17 am

"Current drivers are *not yet* supporting the Powerplay power-saving technology in the R48xx cards."

How can you be sure of this argument and how do you know that the power play power savings incompatibility is not a hardware but a driver issue?

Matija
Posts: 780
Joined: Sat Mar 17, 2007 3:17 am
Location: Croatia

Post by Matija » Wed Jun 25, 2008 4:05 am

I'm curious about that as well.

I'm also curious if my HR-03 could cool the 4850 adequately, but that's a different issue :)

smilingcrow
*Lifetime Patron*
Posts: 1809
Joined: Sat Apr 24, 2004 1:45 am
Location: At Home

Post by smilingcrow » Wed Jun 25, 2008 4:46 am

I’ve read speculation that the under-clocking & under-volting feature has been moved from the BIOS to the driver with the HD 4xxx series cards. I hope this is the case as many manufacturers failed to implement it in the BIOS which made choosing a HD 3xxx series card a pain and didn’t reflect well on ATI ultimately. I just hope that a new driver tames the idle power draw of these cards as the 4870 is shockingly high by ATI’s standards.

N-K
Posts: 54
Joined: Wed Nov 22, 2006 10:23 am
Location: Finland

Post by N-K » Wed Jun 25, 2008 7:11 am

I have had the Asus EAH4850 for a day now.
The fan spins really slowly on idle.
When I ran 3DMARK06 it still didn't seem to spin faster. At least I didn't spot any difference. This could be a problem.

GPU-Z shows 500MHz for GPU core and 750MHz for memory when on idle.
They sure seem a bit high...
I'm using the HD4800 series hotfix drivers.

Temperatures were too high for my taste (over 70C on idle). I thought the plastic cover would melt.
Accelero S1 lowered the idle temperature to 36C.

My PSU (Silverstone ST30NF) is only 300W (18A for 12V) but it seems to be enough for this card.

thejamppa
Posts: 3142
Joined: Mon Feb 26, 2007 9:20 am
Location: Missing in Finnish wilderness, howling to moon with wolf brethren and walking with brother bears
Contact:

Post by thejamppa » Wed Jun 25, 2008 9:02 am

70 degree's Idle is not bad considering its running on fult tilt on stock single slot cooler as PowerPlay is not on yet. But its good to know that Accelero S1 goes on it ^^

Matija
Posts: 780
Joined: Sat Mar 17, 2007 3:17 am
Location: Croatia

Post by Matija » Wed Jun 25, 2008 9:16 am

What did you use to cover the VRMs with? The 4850 is like the 3850, the cooler covers the VRMs instead of it being a separate piece of metal.

smilingcrow
*Lifetime Patron*
Posts: 1809
Joined: Sat Apr 24, 2004 1:45 am
Location: At Home

Post by smilingcrow » Wed Jun 25, 2008 11:21 am

I had an entry level Nvidia 7 series cards that idled at 70C+ but that said more about the cooler than the GPU. A single slot cooler with a GPU of this wattage is always going to need an aftermarket solution to achieve a low noise level.

rpsgc
Friend of SPCR
Posts: 1630
Joined: Tue Oct 05, 2004 1:59 am
Location: Portugal

Post by rpsgc » Wed Jun 25, 2008 12:00 pm

Like I said before, the stock TIM is crap. Replace it with something else and the temps will drop in average to the 50s C.

Matija
Posts: 780
Joined: Sat Mar 17, 2007 3:17 am
Location: Croatia

Post by Matija » Wed Jun 25, 2008 11:38 pm

And here we go.

Image

The card does use a whole lot extra power over the 3870 :(

It would be a great choice if its idle consumption was lower... Not so much right now.

I'm disappointed.

nutball
*Lifetime Patron*
Posts: 1304
Joined: Thu Apr 10, 2003 7:16 am
Location: en.gb.uk

Post by nutball » Thu Jun 26, 2008 12:27 am


Matija
Posts: 780
Joined: Sat Mar 17, 2007 3:17 am
Location: Croatia

Post by Matija » Thu Jun 26, 2008 12:42 am

So it's a BIOS problem?

nutball
*Lifetime Patron*
Posts: 1304
Joined: Thu Apr 10, 2003 7:16 am
Location: en.gb.uk

Post by nutball » Thu Jun 26, 2008 12:51 am

Sounds like it may be. Would be nice to see some idle power consumption figures with the updated BIOS, temperatures are pretty much irrelevant.

Modo
Posts: 486
Joined: Wed Apr 16, 2008 3:32 am
Location: Poland

Post by Modo » Thu Jun 26, 2008 1:00 am

Maybe the idle power consumption is a BIOS problem, but the HD 4850 has about twice the processing power of the HD 3870, while being built using the same technology, so I wouldn't count on a large reduction when in use.

Scoop
Posts: 121
Joined: Sat Dec 08, 2007 1:28 am

Post by Scoop » Thu Jun 26, 2008 1:59 am

Anyone else find it amusing that you need to buy a big ass PSU for the 9800GTX just for the extra pcie connector when the HD 4850 uses more power and manages with just one. :D

smilingcrow
*Lifetime Patron*
Posts: 1809
Joined: Sat Apr 24, 2004 1:45 am
Location: At Home

Post by smilingcrow » Thu Jun 26, 2008 2:46 am

Modo wrote:Maybe the idle power consumption is a BIOS problem, but the HD 4850 has about twice the processing power of the HD 3870, while being built using the same technology, so I wouldn't count on a large reduction when in use.
It doesn’t have to be that way as the nVIDIA GTX 200 series are more powerful and built on the same process size as their previous generation but consume significantly less than them at idle.
ATI were talking about less than 10W at idle so hopefully it is a BIOS or Driver issue. The HD 4870 consumes a lot more at idle than the 4850 which seems to be down to the GDDR5! Not sure how much a BIOS/Driver update will impact on that.

smilingcrow
*Lifetime Patron*
Posts: 1809
Joined: Sat Apr 24, 2004 1:45 am
Location: At Home

Post by smilingcrow » Thu Jun 26, 2008 2:50 am

Scoop wrote:Anyone else find it amusing that you need to buy a big ass PSU for the 9800GTX just for the extra pcie connector when the HD 4850 uses more power and manages with just one. :D
I’ve noticed that a 6 pin PCIe cable will connect with an 8 pin connector on the card. Provided that the card doesn’t require more than the 6 pin cable can provide is it safe to run that sort of configuration?

Modo
Posts: 486
Joined: Wed Apr 16, 2008 3:32 am
Location: Poland

Post by Modo » Thu Jun 26, 2008 3:13 am

smilingcrow wrote:It doesn’t have to be that way as the nVIDIA GTX 200 series are more powerful and built on the same process size as their previous generation but consume significantly less than them at idle.
Sorry if I was not precise enough. I was not referring to idling, but to active use, like 3D gaming. Sadly, that probably won't be helped by new drivers, and it might prevent graphics cards' manufacturers from making parts with factory-designed fanless cooling.

ryboto
Friend of SPCR
Posts: 1439
Joined: Tue Dec 14, 2004 4:06 pm
Location: New Hampshire, US
Contact:

Post by ryboto » Thu Jun 26, 2008 10:22 am

Matija wrote:And here we go.

Image

The card does use a whole lot extra power over the 3870 :(

It would be a great choice if its idle consumption was lower... Not so much right now.

I'm disappointed.
It's not so bad. For a 40+% increase in die size, they only go up 30W at load vs the 3870. Idle power needs to be addressed, as it appears to be some bug. It would be nice to hear an official word from AMD on the matter.

Post Reply