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doomtrooper (741)    Feb 13, 2007 - 10:02 am

Glad I could be of service, I'm a specialist at making myself look stupid. Welcome to FS! » Login to reply to this

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BigScooter (409)    Feb 12, 2007 - 07:25 pm

are those supposed to be out in March? pretty sure someone told me that. I am waiting too, but I don't know for how much longer if I don't see some cards droppin' in for reviews. » Login to reply to this

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GX-Brandon (369)   Feb 12, 2007 - 02:02 pm

I included power draw numbers in my 65-nm Brisbane review, simply to show the difference between AMD's 90-nm and 65-nm CPUs. That was a case where I felt power comparisons were useful. In the case of the 8800 GTS 320MB though, I honestly didn't see the point of testing power draw, and felt that CSAA and 8xMSAA testing was more important. After all, it's the same clocks as the previous GTS, only with less memory, so nothing's really changed. I also agree with CodE-E that most gamers don't make their purchasing decisions based on power, but instead the most important factors are: 1) Performance 2) Price 3) Image Quality I honestly think noise is probably a bigger issue than power. And doomtrooper, an A/C unit consumes SIGNIFICANTLY more power than your PC. Try running your A/C unit for 10 hours straight one month and you'll see that for yourself firsthand. Even if you're running your PC under load 24/7 it will consume nowhere near the power of an A/C unit. » Login to reply to this  doomtrooper (741)   Feb 12, 2007 - 03:10 pm An average 8000 BTU AC unit used to cool a room will use about 1KW, larger units that cool houses will use a lot more, like you said. I might be off by a bit, but that's close to the power use of newer computers. » Login to reply to this  GX-Brandon (369)   Feb 13, 2007 - 12:25 am doomtrooper: ripfire's 300W figure is for total system power, not just the 8800 GTX GPUs. As I said, I didn't run the numbers for this particular review, but I did test Core 2 and A64 X2 systems with 8800 GTX graphics and the power was nowhere near 1-kilowatt: http://firingsquad.com/hardware/amd_athlon_64_4800_65-nm_preview/page10.asp Even with dual 8800 GTX cards in SLI with a quad-core CPU, you'd be nowhere near pushing 1-kilowatt. Again, a PC is nowhere near the power levels of an AC unit. Even the most decked out PC with SLI, quad-core CPU, LED lighting, etc isn't going to come close to what you're suggesting. Also keep in mind that those are load figures, but for web browsing, typing up docs, etc, your power consumption is much closer to the idle power figures listed in the aforementioned article. You'd basically need to be running your PC under full load literally 24/7 to really affect your power bill, and to the best of my knowledge, no one does that. » Login to reply to this  doomtrooper (741)    Feb 12, 2007 - 05:54 pm Yeah that's right, but you if consider the all the other components and some rigs have dual gfx. It adds up to almost one kilowatt. » Login to reply to this  ripfire (430)    Feb 12, 2007 - 03:18 pm Actually, the most a computer can consume under load with 8800GTX is about 300W, about less than a third of a kilowatt. Now if you have 3 PCs at home, that's a different story. :) » Login to reply to this

CodE-E (312)    Feb 12, 2007 - 11:51 am | Edited on Feb 12, 2007 - 11:52 am

Seriously, how many computer game enthusiasts base their decision on which GPU to buy even slightly on power consumption? o_O If you're asking about what PSU it needs to be able to run at all, then check out Nvidia's site. It'll be somewhere under system requirements. » Login to reply to this  ripfire (430)   Feb 12, 2007 - 12:32 pm Umm.. Well, I'm one of them. It's not so much about the power requirements on the PSU itself. It's more about how much power do I have to invest to get that kind of performance. Everyone knows that you can always gain more performance as you put more power into it. The efficiency comes into play by gaining performance with the least power increase. That's why I personally rate the cards on a performance:power efficiency. » Login to reply to this  doomtrooper (741)   Feb 12, 2007 - 12:18 pm | Edited on Feb 12, 2007 - 12:25 pm It's simply because computer power usage is getting ridiculous. An A/C unit consumes about the same power as a high end PC and look how much trouble they are causing for the power grid. If everyone started using 1KW PCs we'd be royaly screwed. » Login to reply to this  FSgeeK (531)    Feb 14, 2007 - 08:58 am sounds like yur just paranoid to me » Login to reply to this

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