Eskom Sucks!!

M

Monkey101

Expert Member
Joined
Nov 6, 2008
Messages
1,923
Reaction score
678
Location
Durban
So due to the cost increase for the magical computer juice that comes out of the walls I need to do one of a few things to cut electricity costs.

1.Buy a new / more efficient power supply. I am currently running a Gigabyte Odin GT 800w.
What can i get that is more efficient if there is anything?

2.Sell my 4870X2 and get a 5870

3.Change my CPU from a Q6600 to a Q9550

4.I wasting my time.
 
1) Gigabyte is dodgy - get coolermaster ExtremePower
2) No you don't have to, you are just itching to upgrade, if you want to safe power use an onboard Radeon HD 4200 like I do.
3) If you want to safe power go AMD
4) Yes
 
No .. its the inexperienced, nepotistic, ANC-appointed, corrupt-prone, good-for-nothing-except-sucking-the-company-dry BEE cadres appointed to satisfy representative demographics that are currently running Eskom that sucks.

Eskom was doing fine before the ANC took over.
 
4870x2 is probably the juice monster... upgrade to a 5xxx and get a vantec 500w.. should be more than enough power
 
Yeah that should work. I was thinking of the 550W ExtremePower Coolermaster but Vantec seems OK too.
Onboard 4200 saves a lot of power as does a AthlonII X4.
 
Your onboard GPU really isn't saving you that much power, at least with the new GPU's out there. A 5850 in 2D mode draws a max of 5W more than what it does in idle.
Also, slow CPU's dont actually save you power, depending on what you do with it. A slow CPU will consume less power per second, but will need to run for a long time to do a certain operation. A fast CPU will use less time, but more power per second and so will sometimes use less power performing a certain operation. CPU power efficiency per clock is what it comes down to, as well as how much you think you will let your system just idle.
 
If you really want power efficiency, then its coming a cost of processing power. By far the most power efficient chip overall is i3/i5 dual core Westmere (pretty obviously, since it is 32nm). The idle power is a bit higher than i5/i7 quadcore, but under load it uses much less than anything else. You'll trade off some performance against a quad core under certain conditions, i.e. threaded performance, but the power usage gap is huge, especially under load. If you are just gaming and doing ordinary tasks the gap in power efficiency is greater than the gap in performance. Of course all this depends on what kind of performance you are satisfied with, since there is going to be a baseline.

Personally, if you are going to upgrade I'd go for an i5 or Phenom II, since neither an Athlon II x4, Core 2 Quad or the i3/i5 dual cores are going to be that future proof. IMO, your best bet at power usage is really to have a secondary power efficient and much less powerful PC for general non-gaming purposes, such as a netbook you can connect to your screen or cheap dualcore desktop, and limit your time on your gaming PC.
 
1st doesn't your PSU only put out the power your PC draws? AKA 800watts is the max amount it can put out, its actually only putting out 4-500 ATM
2nd ATI cards de-clock themselves when not under heavy use to save power

To the rest of you, I don't think he wants to down grade, on board 4200, FFS what is this? 2007?
 
You power supply is fine. The Odin gt s are much better than the normal odins and power supplies are usually most efficient around 50% capacity anyway. A q6600 is a 65nm chip. Get like a q9550. One 5870 will also use less power as it is 40nm tech.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X