Hybrid Power and powerXpress

Spare Tire · Post by **Spare Tire** » Sun May 04, 2008 6:14 am

Which DESKTOP motherboard or chipset support this, and it has to be coupled with which graphics card?
There seems to be no information out there, and plenty of contradictions. 780G was supposed to support powerxpress, but then didn't. Then they said it would at a later time. Does that mean it will be another chipset or a later production 780G, and how will we be able to tell which is which? Will the 790GX support powerxpress and come in matx?
On the nvidia side, hybrid power is clearly stated to be available to desktop. But the 8200 boards that are out right now, do they support it? And which card will work?

loimlo · Post by **loimlo** » Sun May 04, 2008 9:32 am

As for AMD, desktop 780G/790GX won't support powerXpress or hybrid power. AMD thinks discrete card's Powerplay is enough for most people on desktop, and they need to concentrate resources on mobile platform first, PUMA. PUMA were to support hybrid power because it would make more sense on laptop.

As for nVIDA, they've promised the support, but they can't release a stable driver build at this time. No definite schedule on hybrid power for the time being. Geforce8200 may get a hybrid power driver at some point, but don't anticipate too much.

smilingcrow · Post by **smilingcrow** » Mon May 05, 2008 1:57 pm

It might be Vista only as well!

Spare Tire · Post by **Spare Tire** » Thu May 08, 2008 3:00 pm

AMD totally lacks vision. PowerXpress would allow us to put the loudest, most performant radeon into the case and not have it turn on at all until we game. Why the hell would they not think it worth it.

juamez · Post by **juamez** » Fri May 09, 2008 5:11 am

Spare Tire wrote:AMD totally lacks vision. PowerXpress would allow us to put the loudest, most performant radeon into the case and not have it turn on at all until we game. Why the hell would they not think it worth it.

If they can make the card idle at only some watts, then the cards should be able to be kept cool with only minor cooling. That means you can lower the speed of the fan which is on the graphics card. Which makes the card much more quiet. Or do you want more than just lowering the rpms of your graphics card?

loimlo · Post by **loimlo** » Fri May 09, 2008 10:59 am

Well, I guess AMD 3870's 20W idle power draw is easy to cool silently by most coolers. In fact, even a stock 3850's cooler enjoys a high remark in a SPCR review for people on a budget.

nVIDIA wants to keep its chipset business going strong by bundling HybridSLI & HybridPower together. But you've to wait for the driver support. It's not a seamless transition under most circumstances. 8800GT & 9600GT owners cry

Spare Tire · Post by **Spare Tire** » Fri May 09, 2008 4:40 pm

Well i would gladly wait the 10 seconds it takes to start the 9800gtx before a game.

Elrast · Post by **Elrast** » Fri May 09, 2008 10:01 pm

Hi everyone,

Long time lurker & first post!

Been following hybridpower for a bit now and saw these two articles recently:

www.legitreviews.com/article/708/1/
Legit reviews- Dated 7 May 2008

forums.slizone.com/index.php?s=9c34119d081cadf21c257c97db8ea5a9&showtopic=21521&pid=166551&st=0
SLIzone forums

Note the consumption figures on the 1st article: +3W when discrete card is in place and idle!
Is there someone with the needed hardware who can confirm this is real? I'm looking at rebuilding my comp. and if hybridpower is there, it's a good time to get into it.

Cheers,
E

hybrid2d4x4 · Post by **hybrid2d4x4** » Sat Jun 21, 2008 12:53 pm

Thanks for the links Elrast, they made for some interesting reading!

I've been mostly interested in the AMD implementation and was disappointed that there was no mention of powerXpress in their 4xxx series GPU launch. At least Nvidia is taking initiative in this area...

It wasn't explicitly stated in the review, but I presume this means that the vid card fan completely shuts off when in 'power save mode'?

If so, this is great news for me, as I was going to build a separate HTPC for no real reason other than having something very quiet and efficient for the occasional overnight download, or when I'm doing some work that requires my full concentration (and no, I don't consider modern mid-range to high-end vid card fans quiet relative to the rest of my system).
Any word on when they're releasing intel-supported versions of their hybrid-power chipsets?

thejamppa · Post by **thejamppa** » Sat Jun 21, 2008 12:59 pm

Considering the fact that hybrid power requires nVidia board and to work with nVidia card... Vs. Ati's PowerPlay which works in any chipset... Which one is eventually better?

smilingcrow · Post by **smilingcrow** » Sun Jun 22, 2008 3:30 pm

thejamppa wrote:Considering the fact that hybrid power requires nVidia board and to work with nVidia card... Vs. Ati's PowerPlay which works in any chipset... Which one is eventually better?

It depends on the hard data. If you look at the recently released nVIDIA and ATI cards the higher performing nVIDIA cards (GTX 200 series) consumes less or similar power at idle to the ATI card (HD 4850). So regardless of motherboard based solutions ATI are currently behind at the card level which is a big shock and disappointment to me.
Chipset based power reduction solutions are still useful especially for people using multiple VGA cards.

hybrid2d4x4 · Post by **hybrid2d4x4** » Sun Jun 29, 2008 11:01 am

I'm surprised that people (who also play games) on this forum aren't crapping their pants over these technologies. It's a fact that high-end video cards are extremely loud, even with their gate-clocking and lower voltage idle states, etc. in the more recent releases. Being able to completely turn off a component that in some cases uses several times more power than the rest of the system combined has got to be the single greatest innovation to gamers who also want a quiet system when doing regular tasks.

As much as I resent nVidia's antics in the last 2 years (no mid-range cards until the 8800gt, the pseudo-generation gap that resulted in the 9xxx series, the rebadging of already released products with no real physical differences as new products, their sleazy pricing scheme for their 9800 and the 2xx series with respect to their performance, and their DX10.1 suppression politics), I will likely buy a Hybrid-SLI board and vid card once their GF8x00 chipsets come out for intel cpus. It's a real shame since the ATI/AMD 48x0 are such good value for money, and hybrid-power aside, have a much better feature set and are more forward-looking than nVidia's recycled stuff...
If only AMD took some action with their powerXpress on desktops, I might just settle for a Phenom

nutball · Post by **nutball** » Sun Jun 29, 2008 11:42 am

hybrid2d4x4 wrote:I'm surprised that people (who also play games) on this forum aren't crapping their pants over these technologies.

We're not crapping our pants because we're used to both IHVs hyping up some feature in their latest GPU / chipset which fails to deliver, or delivers months or years after the launch of the product.

In principle both technologies are interesting, HybridPower maybe more so if it weren't so restricted in compatibility, but until we see some proper reviews it's all just hype. I'm excited about the prospects for nuclear fusion in solving global warming too, but right now that doesn't work either.

Frankly idle power consumption must be pretty far down the list of priorities for both IHVs, after performance, price, performance, price, price, performance, performance and the colour of the PCB.

ntavlas · Post by **ntavlas** » Sun Jun 29, 2008 12:19 pm

I'm with nutball here: nvidias hybrid power works only on some of it`s (power hungry) amd boards and it`s a vista only feature. Good luck waiting for support on the intel platform.

I`ll have my pcb in black please.

Spare Tire · Post by **Spare Tire** » Mon Jun 30, 2008 7:08 am

The new ATI 4870 is more power hungry than ever. Now would have been a good time to make powerxpress available to desktops.

smilingcrow · Post by **smilingcrow** » Mon Jun 30, 2008 8:16 am

ntavlas wrote:I'm with nutball here: nvidias hybrid power works only on some of it`s (power hungry) amd boards and it`s a vista only feature. Good luck waiting for support on the intel platform.

It works on a lot or possibly all of their newer chipsets including the non SLI versions which are low power judging from the reviews. There are plenty of reviews showing how significant HybidPower is especially with SLI systems of course. Are there plans to port this to XP?

As for Intel versions I thought they were due pretty soon!