Does Sapphire 5670 realy idle to ~8W, like 4670?

[Ksanderash]

Found an interesting article pretending to a precise comsumption analysis worked out (Atmel microcontroller is used, special current sencing, etc)

Resulting wattage table:


Thanks to this information I decided to buy Sapphire 5670 512Mb, SKU# 11168-02-20R (there was 11168-06-20R also, but it took the 02 one). Got it now, so, if anyone is interested on consumption figures, I'll do some homebrew tests

[zoran89]

i have xfx 5670 1 gb.....with accelero S1 rev.2 mounted....it has no direct airflow over it....and only 1 intake and 1 exoust on the case spinning at 600 rpm......and it still iddles around 36-38 depending of the room temp...

[Ksanderash]

Made some downvolting workaround... Default GPU Vcore under load is 1.150V, then I decreased it to 0.900V -- boots, but gives artifacts in FurMark. I think preferable voltage for stock 775/1000MHz is somewhere near 1.050 or so... Let's see the effect on consumption of these 0.1V. I'll try to measure consumption, as I did in the past with 4670.

...
Nexsem NX2422 on Sapphire 5670:

[Ksanderash]

Hm... 0.1V drop gives 1.5W economy in idle, and 10W economy under FurMark load. Btw, 12W idle has this card.

[maf718]

Interesting. I have the exact same Sapphire card on order, not arrived yet. 12W idle not bad, about the same as my old 4670. What are the idle clocks, any scope for lowering them to save more power?

[Ksanderash]

Idle clocks are 157/300Mhz. No gain here. Well, the voltage/frequency pair is pretty ballanced out-of-the-box. On default 1.15V maximum stable for GPU is 900Mhz, and 1150 for RAM.

No need to tweak anything.

The card is also very quiet. Nice choice among other 5670s.

[flapane]

I have the Powercolor version.
The 3d voltage is 1.1 (instead of yours 1.15) BUT I couldn't manage to downvolt it (how did you do?), and 2d voltage is 0.9.

By the way, I lowered the idle power consumption a bit by going down to 130/212, which is enough for h264 HDTV gpu acceleration and PS5. Lower frequencies lead to artifacts and stuttering HDTV decoding.
As a sidenote, the 5xxx serie is waaay more efficient than 3xxx serie for video decoding. The HD3850 needed almost 3d frequencies for HDTV streams.

[maf718]

My Sapphire 5670 (SKU# 11168-02-20R) idles approx 13-14W AC at the wall, so about 10-11W DC allowing for PSU inefficiency. RBE reports 3d voltage of 1.1V and 2d of 1V, haven't checked the voltages manually. This card doesn't overclock well though, unstable, but running at stock is fine. Agree that the Sapphire is pretty quiet, especially if you set fan speed to 20% manually in CCC Overdrive page.

[whispercat]

Interesting...according to that chart, the 5450 idles at 3.2 W on the Win 7 test.

[Ksanderash]

I couldn't manage to downvolt it (how did you do?)

It goes down when in idle automaticaly -- 1.0V from 1.15V when in 3D

Changed the stock fan, now the card is inaudible completely! (outside the case)
Silent gaming, at last!

[flapane]

I mean 0.9v

[Ksanderash]

Through the pen-trick only

But you can't put 0.9 as low and 1V as high -- too little to work on 775 Mhz! The frequency cut should follow

[eewo]

Hey guys,

I wonder how accurate the figures (specifically for HD5670) in the table in the first post are. A couple of reviews* report a much higher power consumption increase from idle to load (usually between 60-100 W) for the HD5670. I'm in a need of a low power graphics card so knowing the power load at least roughly would be important, so which figures should I trust?

* http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?o ... itstart=12 Idle: 19 W, Load: 99 W
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/ha ... ew-18.html Idle -> Load increase 60 W
http://www.techspot.com/review/240-ati- ... page9.html Idle -> Load increase 89 W
Very inconsistent results and different from the table in post 1...

[Ksanderash]

My system with 5670 is AC 50W idle, and w/o 5670 is AC 36W. Thus the presence of this card makes consumption to be 14W higher. Measured with euro-Kill-a-Watt.