Entertainment from all the card reviews

[HedgeHocker]

I've been doing power consumption comparing with the ATI and NVIDIA cards and in reading the many reviews from the old-familiar, if not actually legit, review tech sites I notice that on the same card comparisons the ratings on the power draw varies widely for the same cards with different reviewers. I'm talking about reviews that claim to take into account the system power.

Several review sites will in conclusion say the ATI was more efficient where the next review site, for the same hardware, offers the advice the competing card (brand) is more efficient.

What the hell is going on here?!

ATI has this power managment feature that, it would appear in most tests, does nothing much for idle power draw. It looks to me on average, with the middle group cards and up, that the ATI has the load power draw under control but not the idle ..the idle is more important to many people.... The NVIDIA idle about 30 watts lower in most reviews. This is what I have sort of put together but the reviews that claim the ATI is the less power hungry, and there are more than a few, leave me feeling like Jack Black hanging by a leg from the helicopter in the film "Tropic Thunder".

Apples to apples I'd like to know, finaly, between the Radeon 4890 1G and the GeForce 275 GTX which is more energy efficient.

From all the reviews I can say, quit confidently, I have no clue.

 

[The_Blood_Raven]

Basically the same to be honest. The GTX 275 might have an edge in idle performance like you said, but everything also depends on how much your PC idles and what "idling" means for it.

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

First off, your omitting some apples to apples here. SW determined HW usage, just like running prime 95 uses more from your cpu than say minesweeper does, so do games or other things these sites test with. Alot of variables goes into a true power bench.
As for ATIs low power idle sates, theres a glitch in GDDR5 that causes a blip when downclocking it, and for users sake, they left clocks high enough to avoid it, also, a rumor the MC needs some tweaking. Either way, I wouldnt be surprised if this was fixed this coming gen.
As for the 2 cards mentioned, Id go with the 4890 because of the power setup they put in place, which dropped power usage even over the 4870

 

[HedgeHocker]

First off, your omitting some apples to apples here. SW determined HW usage, just like running prime 95 uses more from your cpu than say minesweeper does, so do games or other things these sites test with. Alot of variables goes into a true power bench.
As for ATIs low power idle sates, theres a glitch in GDDR5 that causes a blip when downclocking it, and for users sake, they left clocks high enough to avoid it, also, a rumor the MC needs some tweaking. Either way, I wouldnt be surprised if this was fixed this coming gen.
As for the 2 cards mentioned, Id go with the 4890 because of the power setup they put in place, which dropped power usage even over the 4870

That's interesting and I'd likie to know more about that glitch so I can track the problem and descide later if they do fix it. You can save $40.00 getting the 4890 over the 275 and if the power consumption issue gets corrected they have a buyer with me.

I'd like to hope ATI/AMD doesnt have thebullcrap driver support problems still. I have NEVER had driver support problems with NVIDIA cards and I have ALWAYS had driver problems with my ATI cards. I will kick myself in the ass if I get that 4890 and get ta' artifactin' ..especialy after all this carefulll shopping.

Yeah if they fix it I will save cash on the purchase and on the usage and that's a big deal in todays economy for just about every budgeter. I read the Anandtech comparison of these two cards and regarding the Phyxs or whatever - just not used enough unfortunatly to matter right now. CUDA I couldn't care less about. CUDA WOODA SHUDA

Thanks for those replies! Post a link or something for me please Jaydeejohn.

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

Cant find the pld links. But the jump from say 200 to 4000 was too much, and the screen jumped, so it wasnt done, and it shows a nice power savings too, but it doesnt appear "normal".
I hear that it was brought up again when news of a new MC was coming out on the new chips.
You can downclock it yourself, if you dont mind the jumping