The full truth revealed: GTX480 is one power sucking monster --Fudzilla

[Apocalypse23]

http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/18503/1/

Reading this and looking at the benchmarks made my jaws drop D:

 

[Apocalypse23]

In the future, please don't inline all of the images from an article. I'm sure those guys could use the page hits.

Super Moderator BFG10K.

 

[Powermoloch]

D: for the love of gawd !

 

[SHAQ]

I thought this was official a week ago? And he compares it to a much slower card.

 

[Lonyo]

Because no one knew that already?

 

[OCGuy]

Breaking news!

 

[Seero]

Funny it didn't mention the flickering problem on dual display.

 

[solofly]

Yep, total PIG on power consumption...

 

[yh125d]

Yeah there's a reason I won't be considering this round from nvidia

 

[ScorcherDarkly]

Why did they do all the benchmarks as 480 vs 5850? That seems silly.

 

[SergeC]

Why did they do all the benchmarks as 480 vs 5850? That seems silly.

For the greater difference, I imagine.

 

[HurleyBird]

I don't really care about power consumption or what it does to the energy bill, but heat is another matter. I was playing STO yesterday with the windows open at night (in northern Albera!), and the way that game loads up a gfx card, it put out so much heat as to make me uncomfortable, and that's a 5870. I can only imagine that Fermi would be much worse than that with any game, totally not worth the small performance increase if you can't tell the difference 98% of the time but you're dieing of heat all the time. Maybe if you live in Alaska, but I wouldn't trade my 5870 for a Fermi ever. In fact, I almost wish I had bought a 5850 instead for a lot less money, substantially less heat, quieter, and 90% of the time you can't tell the difference in performance anyway.

 

[nitromullet]

/yawn

 

[Lonyo]

I don't really care about power consumption or what it does to the energy bill, but heat is another matter. I was playing STO yesterday with the windows open at night (in northern Albera!), and the way that game loads up a gfx card, it put out so much heat as to make me uncomfortable, and that's a 5870. I can only imagine that Fermi would be much worse than that with any game, totally not worth the small performance increase if you can't tell the difference 98% of the time but you're dieing of heat all the time. Maybe if you live in Alaska, but I wouldn't trade my 5870 for a Fermi ever. In fact, I almost wish I had bought a 5850 instead for a lot less money, substantially less heat, quieter, and 90% of the time you can't tell the difference in performance anyway.

Power consumption is heat. Where do you think the heat comes from?

 

[EarthwormJim]

I don't really care about power consumption or what it does to the energy bill, but heat is another matter. I was playing STO yesterday with the windows open at night (in northern Albera!), and the way that game loads up a gfx card, it put out so much heat as to make me uncomfortable, and that's a 5870. I can only imagine that Fermi would be much worse than that with any game, totally not worth the small performance increase if you can't tell the difference 98% of the time but you're dieing of heat all the time. Maybe if you live in Alaska, but I wouldn't trade my 5870 for a Fermi ever. In fact, I almost wish I had bought a 5850 instead for a lot less money, substantially less heat, quieter, and 90% of the time you can't tell the difference in performance anyway.

We're talking 150 watts of heat difference between the two. Most floor heaters are 1000-1500 watts, and they won't really heat up a room, just a small area (under your desk). A fully loaded computer is maybe 400 watts.

Does your room temperature skyrocket when you turn on a few light bulbs? Those generate heat


It's in your head that your 5870 is heating up your room significantly.

 

[HurleyBird]

Power consumption is heat. Where do you think the heat comes from?

:facepalm:

Thank you captain obvious. What I'm getting at is that the cost is one aspect power draw that I don't care about... I leave my computer on all the time. The heat is the aspect of power draw I do care about.

We're talking 150 watts of heat difference between the two. Most floor heaters are 1000-1500 watts, and they won't really heat up a room, just a small area (under your desk). A fully loaded computer is maybe 400 watts.

Does your room temperature skyrocket when you turn on a few light bulbs? Those generate heat


It's in your head that your 5870 is heating up your room significantly.

:double facepalm:

The difference is that the 100w from a light bulb is a fair distance away from you. If you're close enough to that light bulb then chances are it will make you uncomfortable. As you said yourself, the computer will heat up the small area under your desk -- where half of your body is -- and that heat rises upwards as well.

And do you really think that I'm imaging things? That I'm so stupid that I can't tell whether or not there's a huge temperature difference between where I'm sitting and somewhere else in the room when the graphics card is loaded? Go sod off.

 

[JSt0rm]

Why did they do all the benchmarks as 480 vs 5850? That seems silly.

A valid point but it still seems like a big difference.

 

[ZimZum]

We're talking 150 watts of heat difference between the two. Most floor heaters are 1000-1500 watts, and they won't really heat up a room, just a small area (under your desk). A fully loaded computer is maybe 400 watts.

Does your room temperature skyrocket when you turn on a few light bulbs? Those generate heat

A 60w light bulb can increase the temperature in a large room by 5 degrees Fahrenheit.

 

[Madcatatlas]

comparing it to the 5850 is ok, if you reason that - it is the card - or the performance average most people who read forums like this (or check reviews like that) have in terms of GPU.

And ofcourse it also shows a visual difference that would be less with a 5870, but still high enough to make one notice.

And we did know this along time ago, but some individuals who keep downplaying this fact/factor in their praise of the cards performance, mandate that this be discussed and brought up again and again.

 

[Madcatatlas]

A 60w light bulb can increase the temperature in a large room by 5 degrees Fahrenheit.

5 degrees fahrenheit.. OMG! call the firedepartment.
Thats practically nothing.

 

[jbh545]

Nothing to see here. A high end card tested against a midrange card using nonstressful games and probably low resolutions so the midrange card somewhat competes on performance. Everyone already knows you don't need a gtx480 to play company of heroes. But if you want to play metro maxed at 2560, a pair of 480 will run it well and a pair of 5850 will Be a slideshow. The 5850 is for joe sixpack mainstream gamer, the 480 is an enthusiast card.

 

[EarthwormJim]

A 60w light bulb can increase the temperature in a large room by 5 degrees Fahrenheit.

That's assuming there's no other cooling, an empty relatively small room, and that the heat isn't radiating outside of the room, and that's approximately per hour. It's not going to raise the temperature by 5 degrees in a real room inside a home.

If it really took that little bit of power to do significant heating like that, you would see more floor heaters that are in the hundred watt range, and not 1000 or so.

 

[EarthwormJim]

:facepalm:

Thank you captain obvious. What I'm getting at is that the cost is one aspect power draw that I don't care about... I leave my computer on all the time. The heat is the aspect of power draw I do care about.



:double facepalm:

The difference is that the 100w from a light bulb is a fair distance away from you. If you're close enough to that light bulb then chances are it will make you uncomfortable. As you said yourself, the computer will heat up the small area under your desk -- where half of your body is -- and that heat rises upwards as well.

And do you really think that I'm imaging things? That I'm so stupid that I can't tell whether or not there's a huge temperature difference between where I'm sitting and somewhere else in the room when the graphics card is loaded? Go sod off.

You said it gets warm when you're gaming. Maybe you're getting warm because of the stress you feel while gaming

 

[HurleyBird]

You said it gets warm when you're gaming. Maybe you're getting warm because of the stress you feel while gaming

Negative, and it only becomes really noticeable with games that really load up the GPU. STO is well documented to *really* heat up gfx cards from both ATI and Nvidia more so than most other games. Really gets the fan going too. Pretty much the worst thing I've come across save Furmark obviously.

 

[ronnn]

Why did they do all the benchmarks as 480 vs 5850? That seems silly.

Not sure why anyone reads fud, but my guess would be he doesn't have any other cards available.