Electricity expensive - need cheaper video card solution

[Brewster0101]

Well with increasing electricity bills and more and more power hungry graphics cards I am looking for a
solution that offers a better solution than using 200 watt GPU power to browse the internet.

Currently running a 4870 which idles around 200 watts - peaks at near to 300 watts I believe. But 90% of the time the computer is on, its just for web browsing and reading.

Is there a hybrid way to use a low power GPU solution for this and have a high end card in the back ground for when playing games and stuff.

One option I am looking at is a laptop for general day to day things, as these have low power usage.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

An HD5870 or an HD5870 are much faster than an HD4870 but consume less power at idle. The HD4870 is a power hog at idle when compared to an HD6870 or an HD5870.

You can get an HD6870 for around £132 delivered:

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Compo...44533&context=

Edit!!

An HD6870 consumes one third of an HD4890 at idle:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/H...D_6870/27.html



The HD6870 is more than 30% faster than an HD4890:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/H...D_6870/29.html

[Brewster0101]

Is that table correct. I see elsewhere that the 4870 is about 190 watts in idle and upto 300watts in full use.

Anyhow I think changing my 4870 would help reduce the wattage by a fair bit.

[badass]

Is that table correct. I see elsewhere that the 4870 is about 190 watts in idle and upto 300watts in full use.

That's the power consumption of the entire system.
Either that or my Q6600 based system uses no watts and it was all the 4870.

[Brewster0101]

Oh ok, me being a little dumb there then. So my system should roughly be using 300 watts max with this card. (roughly)

[badass]

Oh ok, me being a little dumb there then. So my system should roughly be using 300 watts max with this card. (roughly)

I don't know about your system but that's what my system used before I changed the card.

[kalniel]

Oh ok, me being a little dumb there then. So my system should roughly be using 300 watts max with this card. (roughly)

Yup. So you'd have to use your computer an awful lot to make back the additional cost of getting a new card.

[Brewster0101]

Fair enough on that last comment.

I have a 850 watt PSU in my computer. Is that going to waste electricity by drawing too much power than needed?

[Pob255]

Umm no, psu's draw the amount of power demanded by the system + efficiency
ie, if your pc is only using 200w, and your psu can do 80% efficiency at 200w then you'd only pull 240w from the wall, reguardless if it's a 200w or 800w psu

However if you're pulling really low loads your psu efficiency is probably terrible, most psu's are optimal efficiency around 40-50% and rapidly drop below 20%.