Advice on new Intel or AMD

OP said hes interested in a NVidia GPU, I let him know about the power consumption issue incase he was not aware. Its called being helpful.
Quit bitching. What value are you adding by doing so?
 
Lope said:
OP said hes interested in a NVidia GPU, I let him know about the power consumption issue incase he was not aware. Its called being helpful.
Quit bitching. What value are you adding by doing so?
Click to expand...

For the record, he may get a GTX460 which is actually Nvidias best offering right now in terms of power, price and performance. It does not use lots of power relative to its performance (±155W), nor does it run hot. So again I say, more reading, less insulting ok?
And you are not being helpful since in a thread about AMD and Intel CPUs you came along with ATI talk which is an answer to a question that nobody asked. So what value are you adding then? Zippo! Seriously, if someone asks about a memory problem, do you start giving them advice on which mouse to buy?
 
Oy, leave Archer alone! He is the father of my computer ;). I decided to jump in on the current boards, as I've heard that the next gen intel sockets don't overclock as well as the current gen. Also, its more of an evolution than a revolution, and there's nothing wrong with the current generation. But if you absolutely must have the latest, then just wait a few months :)
 
I have a 650w PSU at the moment, currently it runs my 9800gt + my seven hard drives, actually my 400w used to run all of these fine as well, until it gave up, must have been me adding more hard drives.

Oh and Im probably going to get retire some of the hard drives soon, and replace with two 2TB drive running RAID 1.
 
Archer said:
FUD
Click to expand...
Archer said:
more reading, less insulting ok?
Click to expand...
Archer said:
Shhhh, dont spoil the party with facts!
Click to expand...
Tripping over yourself there.
You assert that on a forum people should only make posts that provide information directly answering the OP's question.
You seem to have a very closed mind about what a discussion forum is, and what you want other people to do.
I'm going to continue providing information I think people will find useful. If you're not interested, you can disregard what I say or continue whining.
 
Meh I'd wait till next year mid Jan then buy if I was you :)

This is how Intel work with their processor releases.. They make a die then refine it and move to a smaller die. That forms their tick tock approach
Intel_TicToc_IDF09.jpg

Source: http://www.cdrinfo.com/sections/news/Details.aspx?NewsId=26012
 
Lope said:
snip
Click to expand...

Close minded, me? Rofl. The thing is what you said was plainly wrong. The GTX460 that the OP is looking at does not run hot, does not use lots of power, and actually gives very good FPS for your buck. ie your original statement was FUD. Had the OP been talking about a GTX480 then sure, you would've been spot on, but he was not. So you are wrong. Admit it like a big boy and get on with your life. Sheez. Feel free to post info you think is relevant and useful, just make sure it is correct or risk having your mistake pointed out.
 
Lope said:
I hear ATI is WAYYY more efficient at the moment. I dunno details, but...
Click to expand...
As you can see above, I never claimed to be an expert in this area. Archer's response was rude and unsubstantiated.
In this case, my comment on the power consumption was wrong.
Thats fine, tell me then. This is a place of discussion.
But don't tell me I can't bring up the subject of power consumption when someone is building a high performance PC.
Electricity prices are going up all the time, for example if you get a 80+ PSU over an el cheapo and end up using 400W instead of 600W, you'll save almost R1000 in a year (24/7) or R330 (8h/day). (assuming 56.6c/kWh, its probably more though, and will increase)
People end up leaving their high performance PCs on to run downloads etc, it can cost you a lot. (not to mention environmental impact, with most of SA's power coming from coal).
 
Lope, I'm not exactly sure how you did your calculations, because the difference between 70% and 90% efficient will not give you 600W & 400W respectively!

I've now gone and created an Excel file with charts that show you the impact on your electricity bill w.r.t the different PSU efficiencies. You can see a screenshot of the charts & info here: http://media.s3.zoopy.com/media/2010/11/24/34317/254400/original.jpg
I've basically chosen 3 different daily usage scenarios (24h @ full load, 2h @ full load & 22h @ idle and 2h @ full load).
I've also used a reference PC that is an i7 920 + HD 6870 where the components draw ~130W at idle and ~300W at full load. You'll see that I've included a table that shows how much the actual power consumption will increase for the respective PSU efficiencies.

What you can basically deduct from those graphs are:
1) Don't leave a high performance PC switched on when it's idling!
2) Don't use a cheap power supply if you're going to be running a high performance PC at full load 24/7 for 365 days of the year
So you'll actually save more money by switching off the PC or placing it in standby, when it was going to idle for most of the day, than you'll save when buying a very expensive 90% efficient power supply and letting your PC idle!
For this exact reason, I'm mostly using my laptop for work/web surfing and when I'm doing hectic work/play games, I use my beast (Core i7 + 2x GTX460 OC -> 6W standby * / 120W idle / 460W load) :D

@Lope again:
When the components consume 360W, a 90% eff PSU would draw 400W from the AC input and a 70% efficient PSU will draw 514W from the AC input!
Using your tariff of 0.56c/kWh, you will save R560 per year by using a 90% efficient PSU over a 70% efficient PSU when you're running the 360W PC at full load 24/7, which is half of what you've estimated :)

If you want to plug in your own values (fields marked in yellow), then you can download my Excel 2007 file from: http://www.quickshare.co.za/files/qb532eel/Power_Calculator.xlsx.html

I calculated the electricity bill by: bill = ([load of components at full load in kW * daily usage at full load in h] + [load of components at idle in kW * daily usage at idle in h] + [load of components at standby in kW * daily usage at standby in h]) / PSU efficiency * 365 days/year * tariff in R/kWh
eg.
with 90% eff PSU and 24/7 usage at full load: bill = ( [ 0.36 kW * 24h ] + [ 0.13 kW * 0 h ] + [ 0.006 kW * 0 ] ) / 0.90 * 365 days/year * 0.56 R/kWh = R 1 962.24
with 70% eff PSU and 24/7 usage at full load: bill = ( [ 0.36 kW * 24h ] + [ 0.13 kW * 0 h ] + [ 0.006 kW * 0 ] ) / 0.70 * 365 days/year * 0.56 R/kWh = R 2 522.88

Of course my scenarios aren't ideal and the efficiencies of the power supplies are usually different during idle and at like 80% load, but I just don't want to make it that complicated :)
I can't say that the 6W standby is correct, because I don't know for sure that my Corsair AX850's efficiency is 90% at such low power consumptions, so I've just taken the 6W that I've measured at the AC input.

It is also worth noting that your PC also consumes power when it is switched off, but not unplugged/switched off at the AC input!
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X