Lowest wattage HDMI+DVI PCIe video card?

davidh44 · Post by **davidh44** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 12:26 am

I'm looking for a low power, fanless HDMI+DVI PCIe video card...one that will give me the lowest idle wattage possible. I don't do any 3D, so 3D performance is a non-factor.

I'm currently running a Powercolor HD3450 and it chews up 15W at idle (probably partially due to them not bothering to enable PowerPlay, which seems to be the case for most HD3450 cards).

Any suggestions?

ZaphodB · Post by **ZaphodB** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 2:10 am

How do you know that Power Play is not enabled?

I recently bought Sapphire Radeon HD4550:
http://www1.sapphiretech.com/us/product ... =260&grp=3
Its spec say that it should consume 25 wats under full load, don't know how would then power consumption be at idle, probably much less than 15 wats, I gues. It is fanless, of course.

Now there is a footnote:

ATI PowerPlayâ„¢ technology consists of numerous power saving features. Not all features may be available in all ATI Radeon HD 4550 graphics card.

Now the question is which HD 4550 graphics card have which features available?

And how to figure that out?

psiu · Post by **psiu** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 4:30 am

I bought a Powercolor 4350 from Newegg and it has Powerplay enabled (clock speeds change--it says voltage changes). Of course an interesting problem. Run it at any HD-specific resolution, and it runs at full speed.

Shamgar · Post by **Shamgar** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 9:12 am

15W idle is not unusual for these cards. ATI 3/4350-4550 and Nvidia 8/9400 cards generally consume more power than their predecessors 2400 Pro and 7600 respectively.
Unless you find an older generation card, you're not likely to find much lower graphics power consumption from current cards, unless you go with an integrated graphics motherboard. A new series of cards with smaller manufacturing process may improve things.
Regarding PowerPlay feature, it seems like a mystery as well as clever marketing. Either ATI should make it mandatory for card partners to include it or card makers should not advertise default spec's when marketing their products.
While power frugal fanatics always want lower consumption, 10-15W is not terrible for a modern graphics card with all the features you are getting and expect.

lm · Post by lm » Sun Jul 26, 2009 10:08 am

Wasn't the 4670, also reviewed on this site, supposed to draw much less than that?

Shamgar · Post by **Shamgar** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 10:19 am

4670 reviewed by SPCR was an ATI manufacturing sample. Perhaps "handpicked" for best performance efficiency wise if we are to be cynical. As we cannot know for sure, this is what many users inferred after finding out commercial versions of 4670 did not idle as low as expected.
To be fair to ATI, sample variances is very common and differences of a few watts is to be expected. Consider also commercial versions of cards may differ from the manufacturing blueprint and include more features, higher clock speeds and brand specific firmware which may impact on power consumption.
For owners of 4670, this may be of little comfort as they expected much better power frugality from their card, comparing with the results of SPCR.
As I said before, perhaps if companies like ATI are to avoid this anomaly in the future, they should make it mandatory for card partners to include such sought after features as PowerPlay in their products.

davidh44 · Post by **davidh44** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 12:29 pm

ZaphodB wrote:How do you know that Power Play is not enabled?

I used RBE (Radeon Bios Editor) to look at the profiles on my Powercolor HD3450, and they're all set at 1.1v. Wasn't able to change it either. Only thing the card does is drop the GPU speed from 600Mhz to 300Mhz during idle.

If there's a known way to set your own voltages on cards that have fixed voltage, I'd love to try that out first instead of get a new card.

davidh44 · Post by **davidh44** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 12:30 pm

psiu wrote:I bought a Powercolor 4350 from Newegg and it has Powerplay enabled (clock speeds change--it says voltage changes). Of course an interesting problem. Run it at any HD-specific resolution, and it runs at full speed.

What are the voltages at idle and load? And can you use RBE to further tweak the settings?

Cryoburner · Post by **Cryoburner** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 9:44 pm

davidh44 wrote:I'm looking for a low power, fanless HDMI+DVI PCIe video card...one that will give me the lowest idle wattage possible. I don't do any 3D, so 3D performance is a non-factor.

I'm currently running a Powercolor HD3450 and it chews up 15W at idle (probably partially due to them not bothering to enable PowerPlay, which seems to be the case for most HD3450 cards).

Any suggestions?

15 watts at idle is rather low, actually. There are some low end cards that might manage less than 10, but I don't really see how that savings of 5 or so watts will be of much value. The average cost of electricity in the US is currently around $1 per watt, per year, so even if you left your computer on for 24 hours a day, every day, a 5 watt difference would only save you around $5 a year, unlikely enough to justify a replacement video card. I suppose there's the potential benefit of reducing heat in the case a bit to keep fan speeds down, but again, I don't see 5 watts making a very perceptible difference.

One thing that might be worth trying is to see if you can reduce the card's power consumption using software like ATI Tray Tools to underclock it further in 2D mode. You'd probably need to use an electricity load meter to see whether it's noticeably reducing power draw though.

davidh44 · Post by **davidh44** » Sat Aug 01, 2009 1:17 am

I'm buying it for a new system...just using my current card as a comparison.

Underclocking typically doesn't make that much difference in power draw during idle, whereas undervolting will.

psiu · Post by **psiu** » Sat Aug 01, 2009 5:10 am

davidh44 wrote:
psiu wrote:I bought a Powercolor 4350 from Newegg and it has Powerplay enabled (clock speeds change--it says voltage changes). Of course an interesting problem. Run it at any HD-specific resolution, and it runs at full speed.
What are the voltages at idle and load? And can you use RBE to further tweak the settings?

Sorry for the late response to this:

It has the following standard clocks:
165/250 at 0.9
300/400 at 1.0
600/400 at 1.1

the clocks for UVD though:
600/400 at 1.1 for all load levels.
when set to an "HD" resolution it runs in UVD mode
(ie 1280x720p, 1920x1080i or any setting tweaked off of those)

I might be able to change the UVD settings in RBE. Need to read up and flashing this thing first...don't want to break it

Lt_Dan · Post by **Lt_Dan** » Sat Aug 01, 2009 12:14 pm

when does a card be in idle? what process do you need to run in order for it to go out of idle?
also, it's not just the power saving but the heat the card produces - higher wattage -> higher temp.

Schlotkins · Post by **Schlotkins** » Sun Aug 02, 2009 2:25 pm

Not to hijack the thread, but I'm also in the market for a new low power video card as I'm building a second box. I have a 2900XT in my current machine and it seems to work fine I guess. Is there a place to compare the capabilities of say the 2900pro, 3450 and 4350? They are all close to the same price, but I'm not sure on power draw or say video hardware decoding and so on and so forth.

Thanks,
Chris

psiu · Post by **psiu** » Sun Aug 02, 2009 5:27 pm

I believe the 2900 series (but not the rest of the 2000 series) didn't have UVD? And I think it's been tweaked more since then--do some looking around on Wikipedia they have it broken down pretty good on there.

Otherwise the 3450 and 4350 are definitely not gaming cards--while a 2900 would be.

robinwood · Post by **robinwood** » Mon Aug 03, 2009 12:36 pm

Cryoburner wrote:
15 watts at idle is rather low, actually. There are some low end cards that might manage less than 10,

Hi,

Have you got any reference for graphic card that might manage less than 10W?
(other than Radeon X300, 7300 GS)

Thanks

nightmorph · Post by **nightmorph** » Mon Aug 03, 2009 12:42 pm

halcyon · Post by **halcyon** » Mon Aug 03, 2009 9:50 pm

Excellent link, Nightmorph. Many thanks!

Is there a reason not to use the HD 4350, if one only needs 2D/video decoding acceleration and absolutely no gaming features at all?

It draws even less power than HD 4550 and should support full blu-ray support with Avivo HD (UVD2) as well.

CX23882-19 · Post by **CX23882-19** » Mon Aug 03, 2009 11:35 pm

Have you tried changing the settings in Catalyst Control Center by editing the XML configuration file in a text editor? I have a Radeon HD3650, and this works for me - and the clock speed/voltage can differ from what is set in the video BIOS.

I run at 1920x1200@60Hz, and at idle it runs at 110MHz - this is under either XP or Vista. It really does perform like crap under XP at this speed though, and scrolling is so sluggish that you can see the screen redraw from top to bottom. 300MHz is much snappier, although under Vista (with Aero) this doesn't seem to matter. Aero@110MHz = GDI@300MHz in terms of perceived performance.

It looks like you need to be careful when comparing ATI cards - my 3650 (ASUS EAH3650) only adds around 10W to idle power consumption over the onboard 690G. I can't give an exact figure because I'm only using a Kill-a-Watt type device (European version from Maplin) but it's nowhere near 20W.

I use this to measure power:
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?moduleno=38343

nightmorph · Post by **nightmorph** » Tue Aug 04, 2009 1:40 am

robinwood · Post by **robinwood** » Tue Aug 04, 2009 11:54 am

Thank you for the link

I will try to find a HD 4350 (no gaming)

Lt_Dan · Post by **Lt_Dan** » Tue Aug 04, 2009 12:18 pm

i would go for the 4550, it's more advanced (then the 4350) and very power efficient. good 55mm card.
the only thing bad is the 64-bit memory interface.

andreasl · Post by **andreasl** » Mon Aug 10, 2009 11:11 am

This thread has mostly talked about ATI cards, but what about low power Nvidia cards?

I'm interested in their cards because of VDPAU under linux, but I find it is difficult to find a card that fits my requirements which are almost exactly like the thread starters, but with the condition that it has to be nvidia.

I haven't found any 8400 GS with HDMI, so I'm guessing it doesn't support that, and I'm having trouble seeing any real difference between 9400 and 9500. What would you recommend?

Lt_Dan · Post by **Lt_Dan** » Mon Aug 10, 2009 11:57 am

generally the ATI are more power efficient - the 8*** of Nvidia are hotter.
you need a card that has a HDTV port and can play HD.

my 8600gts - silentpipe3 is a dx10 card shows HD but it doesn't have a specific port for hdmi - it has sort of s-video connection (looks like it anyway, didn't try to connect s-vid cable) with a connector ( that comes with the card) that has a s-video connection, and component connections that are suppose to be hd.

you should check comparison sheets in manufacture websites. check if the card are overclocked from the factory - it makes them hotter obviously.

tomshardware is a good site and the site that was posted here for wattage.

Lowest wattage HDMI+DVI PCIe video card?

Lowest wattage HDMI+DVI PCIe video card?

Re: Lowest wattage HDMI+DVI PCIe video card?

Re: Lowest wattage HDMI+DVI PCIe video card?