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Thread: HD 4850/4870 – Why is idle power consumption so high?

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    HD 4850/4870 – Why is idle power consumption so high?

    I seem to recall ATI promising that their next generation cards would idle at ~10W for the high end single chip versions which means the 4850 & 4870. But all the reviews that I’ve seen are showing disappointingly high idle power consumption especially for the 4870.
    Is this down to poor BIOS implementations or is a driver upgrade required to add under-clocking in 2D mode?

    The HD 3xxx series had a fairly low idle power consumption especially for those board makers that bothered to implement the 2D mode properly in the BIOS. PowerColor and GeCube were two board makers that didn’t implement the down clocking at idle in at least some of their 3 series cards.

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    Re: HD 4850/4870 – Why is idle power consumption so high?

    maybe it's because of the 800 stream processors (is that right? cores or shaders whichever)
    Their load is less than that of the nvidia counterparts though.

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    Re: HD 4850/4870 – Why is idle power consumption so high?

    The odd thing is that the lower end 4000-series (those below 48--) allegedly manages the 10W.

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    Re: HD 4850/4870 – Why is idle power consumption so high?

    Maybe they left it out of the high end ones orrrr it's all to do with the drivers.
    But that is bloody nice having 10w idling.

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    Re: HD 4850/4870 – Why is idle power consumption so high?

    they are lower than the high end nvidia cards, load and idle they beat the competitors, cant expect 10W at idle tbh, but its down to how they underclock it etc.
    Quote Originally Posted by snootyjim View Post
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    Re: HD 4850/4870 – Why is idle power consumption so high?

    Quote Originally Posted by Hicks12 View Post
    they are lower than the high end nvidia cards, load and idle they beat the competitors, cant expect 10W at idle tbh, but its down to how they underclock it etc.
    The GTX 200 series are surprisingly efficient at idle and are generally less than the 4850; the 4870 consumes a lot more though.

    260 / 280 / 4750 / 4850

    Hothardware - 194 / 196 / 207 / 235
    Anandtech – 158 / 159 / 159 / 204
    Techreport – 118 / 122 / 127 / 156
    Arstechnica – N/A / 107 / 114 / 138

    Another way to look at the data is to normalize it compared to the GTX 260 which consumes the least power. Below is the difference between the GTX 260 and the other cards. The Arstechnica article didn’t show data for the GTX 260 so I used the average value of the other tests instead.

    280 / 4750 / 4850

    Hothardware - 2 / 13 / 41
    Anandtech – 1 / 1 / 46
    Techreport – 4 / 9 / 38
    Arstechnica – 2 / 9 / 33

    The situation at load is of course different.

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    Re: HD 4850/4870 – Why is idle power consumption so high?

    hmm, saw different results than that. The 4850 was just under the 9800gtx/8800gts and the 4870 was under the gtx280 on load and idle and then beats the 260 on load not idle.
    Quote Originally Posted by snootyjim View Post
    Trust me, go into any local club and shout "I've got dual Nehalem Xeons" and all of the girls will practically collapse on the spot at the thought of your e-penis

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    Re: HD 4850/4870 – Why is idle power consumption so high?

    Quote Originally Posted by Hicks12 View Post
    hmm, saw different results than that. The 4850 was just under the 9800gtx/8800gts and the 4870 was under the gtx280 on load and idle and then beats the 260 on load not idle.
    Results can vary a lot which is why I grabbed data from 4 sites.

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    Re: HD 4850/4870 – Why is idle power consumption so high?

    Initial BIOS present in all current cards lacks proper PowerPlay settings. Don't blame AMD/ATI though - cards made by partners. this can be resolved with a BIOS update, not sure if drivers may fix this.

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    Re: HD 4850/4870 – Why is idle power consumption so high?

    Quote Originally Posted by CooperXS View Post
    Initial BIOS present in all current cards lacks proper PowerPlay settings. Don't blame AMD/ATI though - cards made by partners. this can be resolved with a BIOS update, not sure if drivers may fix this.
    Unfortunately it does reflect badly on ATI if their board making partners don’t implement basic features of their GPUs. If I see a feature listed on ATI’s product specs I expect it to be implemented.
    It states on the spec sheet for the 4xxx series:

    ATI PowerPlay™ Technology
    Advanced power management technology for optimal performance and power savings
    Performance-on-Demand
    Constantly monitors GPU activity, dynamically adjusting clocks and voltage based on user scenario
    Clock and memory speed throttling
    Voltage switching
    Dynamic clock gating
    Central thermal management – on-chip sensor monitors GPU temperature and triggers thermal actions as required

    *** ATI PowerPlay™ technology consists of numerous power saving features. Not all features may be available in all ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series graphics cards.

    In other words, who knows what you will get with the card you actually buy; it’s less than ideal.

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    Re: HD 4850/4870 – Why is idle power consumption so high?

    Quote Originally Posted by TooNice View Post
    The odd thing is that the lower end 4000-series (those below 48--) allegedly manages the 10W.
    It’s not odd but normal; the cheaper cards are much less complex in design which is why they can idle with a low power consumption.
    The HD 2400 Pro can idle at less than 10W whereas the HD 2900 XT was over 50W I seem to remember.
    Achieving less than 10W at idle for a low to mid range card isn’t a big deal, but ATI were seemingly hoping to manage it with their high end cards also which would be impressive. The report claiming this wasn’t an official document so we’ll have to wait and see what happens – Radeon HD 4000 series specifications surfaces.

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    Re: HD 4850/4870 – Why is idle power consumption so high?

    Quote Originally Posted by Cuervo View Post
    Unfortunately it does reflect badly on ATI if their board making partners don’t implement basic features of their GPUs. If I see a feature listed on ATI’s product specs I expect it to be implemented.
    It states on the spec sheet for the 4xxx series:

    ATI PowerPlay™ Technology
    Advanced power management technology for optimal performance and power savings
    Performance-on-Demand
    Constantly monitors GPU activity, dynamically adjusting clocks and voltage based on user scenario
    Clock and memory speed throttling
    Voltage switching
    Dynamic clock gating
    Central thermal management – on-chip sensor monitors GPU temperature and triggers thermal actions as required

    *** ATI PowerPlay™ technology consists of numerous power saving features. Not all features may be available in all ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series graphics cards.

    In other words, who knows what you will get with the card you actually buy; it’s less than ideal.
    I hear you, though the specs on ATI website reflect the GPU not the whole card mate.

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    Re: HD 4850/4870 – Why is idle power consumption so high?

    Quote Originally Posted by CooperXS View Post
    I hear you, though the specs on ATI website reflect the GPU not the whole card mate.
    I realise that but many cards especially the initial releases tend to be fairly straight copies of the reference design so it makes me wonder whether ATI’s reference design also lacked the PowerPlay feature. If that’s true then the failure lies purely with ATI.

    I’m hoping that it’s purely a driver issue as if it’s a BIOS issue I imagine quiet a few board makers just won’t bother to implement it as was the case with previous GPU releases.
    I wonder if nVIDIA have the same problem with board makers not implementing the power saving features of their GPUs? Or are the features in their driver?

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