Which draws more power? MX or V4500?

[Killrose]

Was wondering which card draws more power. Friend has a micro atx case which I don't think has a very big power supply, and no agp slot(i810 based motherboard),so he will be using a PCI type card. Any ideas?

 

[Petro89]

Hmmm, I would imagine that the MX would use more.

 

[Coki]

No way...... 3Dfx card uses more power. MX and GTS cards use very little power compared to all other video cards for desktops.

 

[steverama]

The GeForce II MX only uses 4 watts of power. Don't know about the V4-4500 but this seems very low. It is even lower than the GeForce II GTS (8-9 watts) and GeForce 256 (16watts). Youcan find all this info on Anandtech's review of the MX card. I would say that the Voodoo 4-4500 uses more wattage than the MX.

 

[Killrose]

Thanks to all who had input

 

[Petro89]

OK, I stand corrected. I know that Geforces have problems on certain systems, due to power limitations. I guess this problem was only linked to GF1 and maybe some GF2s. I had no idea that the MX used that little power. If it is indeed 4 watts, it would be less than the 4500.

Good job guys!

 

[BFG10K]

Regarding nVidia's boards, the GF1 did have power issues but the MX/GF2/Ultra don't because they are based on the .18 micron manufacturing process.

As for the Voodoo 4, I remember reading something in one of the V4 reviews that said 3dfx are still using the .25 micron process for the V4/V5 while nVidia are using the .18 micron process. If that is true then the V4 will definitely draw more power than the GF2 MX.

As a side note, if you read the 3dfx FAQ for the Voodoo3 it would seem that they also had power issues with certain AGP motherboards.

 

[hans007]

heat really shouldn't be a big deal, i've got a micro atx case and i've got a v5 and its fine. The pci bus should have plenty of power for it, its probably only about as hot as a tnt2 ultra.

 

[superbaby]

The MX chip consumes 4W of power.

 

[Subversal]

Anyone know how much power V3 3000 drew/draws? Just curious...

 

[Finality]

I believe the V5500 draws 50 W of power so the V4 should draw 25 Watts of power.

I am however 100% sure that the MX uses less power.

 

[vss1980]

'Anyone know how much power V3 3000 drew/draws?'

I'm not sure any more - it was a long time ago.
But I think it was the order of around 12-14W for the V3. As a guide some motherboard manufacturers only built their motherboards for AGP upto 10W so these had problems. An easy way around this taken by some manufacturers was to add an option to increase the AGP voltage so that way they did not have to re-design the board. This was sometimes marked as a Voodoo3 jumper.

 

[Subversal]

Thanks vss. I bought a friend an OEM GTS and her machine only has a 200watt PS... and she has a V3 in there now. So she should be good.