The best graphics card for single 6-pin power

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peevee

peevee

Junior Member
Nov 14, 2013
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I need help choosing a video card for my system.
My priorities:
1) Should be able to run off a single 6-pin power connector.
2) The latest architecture, all latest APIs support (Open CL, Open GL, DirectX) for the longest projected driver/compatibility support.
3) Low power consumption and _quiet_(!!)
4) Should be able to run at 2.6k x 1.6k (would be great if it could run 4k, but probably not)
5) All necessary connectors (don't want any headaches)
6) Stable drivers
7) Good 2D and OpenCL performance

What is not important - 3D games (I don't play). Well, maybe if it can run Civ V at good resolution (at least 1080p) if I ever decide to in the future.
Price - within reason (say, to $300 - should be enough?).

I have i7-2600k, 430W power if it matters.
 
peevee

peevee

Junior Member
Nov 14, 2013
8
0
66
buklau said:
The most powerful card I can think of at this moment would be the Radeon R9 270 card. 150W TDP with 1x 6 pin power connector. Alternative would be used 7850 2gb series or 7870 2gb with 1x 6 pin power connector.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7503/the-amd-radeon-r9-270x-270-review-feat-asus-his/15
Click to expand...

Thanks!

Any specific card (for quietness)?

I am looking at Newegg and this one for example does not have number of 6-pin connectors it uses.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121823

Are you sure 1 would be enough?
 
A

amenx

Diamond Member
Dec 17, 2004
4,220
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Go to the manufacturers site to be sure. Not all 270's are 1x6 pin. Some, esp custom OC'd cards may be 2x 6 pin.
 
R

raghu78

Diamond Member
Aug 23, 2012
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peevee

peevee

Junior Member
Nov 14, 2013
8
0
66
Leyawiin said:
Out of curiosity, what's the make/model of your power supply?
Click to expand...

Don't remember. I assembled the PC 2.5 years ago. It is decent and efficient, but nothing fancy. I am not a gamer, so have been running off the GPU built-in into the i7-2600k this whole time. Just thinking about upgrading to higher than FullHD monitor, and the integrated GPU does not support that AFAIR.
Again, noise, temperature (causing noise from case fans), stability of drivers, API standard support, 2D/app acceleration and future compatibility are much more important to me than game performance, so my definition of "the best" is probably very different than what reviewers on this site consider the best. ;-)

I am reading about R9 270 - looks like it is 1.5 y/o GCN 1.0 architecture, basically rebrand of 7870 with slower clock. Not exactly new in the tech world. Especially 1/16 ratio for double precision makes me think it is going to be way slower than simply running DP on CPU with SSE, so as good as no acceleration at all. Do things like Photoshop and video encoders use DP now, or it does not matter?
I'd prefer something bleeding edge architecturally, but optimized for low power (basically as little negatives as possible compared to integrated graphics while having much better performance).
 
peevee

peevee

Junior Member
Nov 14, 2013
8
0
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Savatar said:
Check out http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2013-vga-gpgpu/benchmarks,135.html for comparative benchmarks for power consumption at idle and under load. Typically it's more important to have a lower idle consumption, as most people are OK with using more power when they have to (under load).
Click to expand...

I am looking at their data and it is interesting. They don't have data for R9 270, but have for R9 270X and R7 260X, and it is interesting.
The difference between 270X and 270 is that the latter runs at 10%-12% lower clock speed (900 vs 1000 base, 925 vs 1050 boost). So I deduct 10% from 270X performance numbers, and
270X = 267.70 in their OpenCL miner test
260X = 255.80
270X - 10% = 240.9 (estimate for R9 270)

Difference is similar for 3DMark etc.

Power Idle
270X = 15W
260X = 7W
270X - 10% = 13.5W

Power under Load
270X = 170W
260X = 115W
270X-10% = 153W

Noise
270X = 32.6db
260X = 32db
(about the same)

Looks like 260X would serve me better than 270 (actually, what is the point in 270 then?)

Where am I wrong? I must be, because 270 is like 40% more expensive (which I don't mind actually if it is really better for my purposes).

If I am not, what is the quietest and most stable brand of 260X? And is any Nvidia as fast but quieter/consumes less?
 
S

Savatar

Senior member
Apr 21, 2009
230
1
76
It looks like the 260X has 896 shader cores, whereas the 270 has 1280... the 270 also has more texture units, 80 compared to 56 for the 260X. However, both support DirectX 11.2, OpenGL 4.3, and Shader Model 11.2.

Clock speed is about the same, and both seem to have 2 GB RAM (since more RAM seems like it will be important as developers utilize the additional memory available in the PS4 and XBone.

As an interesting (though not directly possible) comparison, the XBox One has 768 shader cores whereas the PS4 has 1152 - though they are a different chipset, of course, and there are other factors that are different between the two (most notably, the memory architecture)... in terms of overall graphical performance, the delta between the two next-gen consoles may be said to be comparable to the capabilities and delta between these two cards. Both will probably be just fine to run next-gen titles for the next several years.

Sources:
For 270/270X: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-270-review-benchmarks,3669.html
For 260X: http://www.hwcompare.com/15835/radeon-r7-260x-vs-radeon-r9-280x/

The slightly more shader units in the 270 and compute textures will translate into better performance numbers depending on the scenario - their OpenCL benchmark probably just isn't taking advantage of that. It depends on the implementation/engine and API used.

According to this benchmark, for Battlefield 3 for example, the 270 gets about 40% better performance, which is almost exactly the difference in shaders/compute units: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2013/11/13/amd-radeon-r9-270-review/3

33-40fps for the 260X vs 47-61 fps for the 270. However, keep in mind they're basically playing 1080p on ultra details with 4xAA and 16x anisotropic filtering.

So it'll vary by game/benchmark... some will take advantage of the extra stuff, and some won't. :-\ Theoretically, down the line I would expect most games to see a 20-40% difference between the two (depending on task), if they are leveraging the hardware. If you're OK with dialing the quality down a notch or two when you have to (usually I can't really tell the difference), then you might be able to save more by going with the 260X... then you can upgrade to a next-gen card whenever that feels slow more easily (with what you saved). The performance delta between generations (and additional API support) can sometimes be more important than different cards within the same generation.
 
Last edited:
Seba

Seba

Golden Member
Sep 17, 2000
1,596
257
126
peevee said:
Where am I wrong? I must be, because 270 is like 40% more expensive (which I don't mind actually if it is really better for my purposes).
Click to expand...
You are only comparing the clock speeds. R9 270 has a 1280:80:32 (shaders:texture units:ROP) core configuration and a 256 bit memory bus, while R7 260X is 896:56:16 with 128 bit memory buss.
 
T

Techhog

Platinum Member
Sep 11, 2013
2,834
2
26
peevee said:
I am looking at their data and it is interesting. They don't have data for R9 270, but have for R9 270X and R7 260X, and it is interesting.
The difference between 270X and 270 is that the latter runs at 10%-12% lower clock speed (900 vs 1000 base, 925 vs 1050 boost). So I deduct 10% from 270X performance numbers, and
270X = 267.70 in their OpenCL miner test
260X = 255.80
270X - 10% = 240.9 (estimate for R9 270)

Difference is similar for 3DMark etc.

Power Idle
270X = 15W
260X = 7W
270X - 10% = 13.5W

Power under Load
270X = 170W
260X = 115W
270X-10% = 153W

Noise
270X = 32.6db
260X = 32db
(about the same)

Looks like 260X would serve me better than 270 (actually, what is the point in 270 then?)

Where am I wrong? I must be, because 270 is like 40% more expensive (which I don't mind actually if it is really better for my purposes).

If I am not, what is the quietest and most stable brand of 260X? And is any Nvidia as fast but quieter/consumes less?
Click to expand...

The 270 and 270X should be identical at idle.
 
K

krumme

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 2009
5,956
1,595
136
peevee said:
I need help choosing a video card for my system.
My priorities:
1) Should be able to run off a single 6-pin power connector.
2) The latest architecture, all latest APIs support (Open CL, Open GL, DirectX) for the longest projected driver/compatibility support.
3) Low power consumption and _quiet_(!!)
4) Should be able to run at 2.6k x 1.6k (would be great if it could run 4k, but probably not)
5) All necessary connectors (don't want any headaches)
6) Stable drivers
7) Good 2D and OpenCL performance

What is not important - 3D games (I don't play). Well, maybe if it can run Civ V at good resolution (at least 1080p) if I ever decide to in the future.
Price - within reason (say, to $300 - should be enough?).

I have i7-2600k, 430W power if it matters.
Click to expand...

If quietness is very important for you(!!), there is no way but the asus 290. Ryan is more noise sensitive than most of reviewers and he praises the asus card. Add in general the db numbers for the card is extremely impressive. Asus have been stellar at making these quiet cards for 1 and a half year. Tons of performance from one 6pin.
 
B

bononos

Diamond Member
Aug 21, 2011
3,921
177
106
Peevee, if you're more concerned about noise, power consumption, API support vs performance since you're only playing games like Civ, then you should know that the 260 and 290 have truaudio (sound h/w) while the 270/280 don't support it.
 
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