The biggest shock for me, is the power consumption of the 4870x2. You would suspect it will be side by side with the Nvidia top card in idle power. Is this a design flaw? AMD said they made a power efficient 'something' on the cards to put power to a minimum with idle.
I thought the cards would shut down the 3D hardware in a 2D environment and become active when a application required the need for raw 3D power. Also the power it needs when in performance mode is incredible. Is the 483watts at the socket or the card itself? Its almost 120w more the the GTX280. Makes you wonder what a "GTX280 x2" would suck out of the wall.
nice article Smalley, i'll be honest its all a bit too much to digest for me. 16 pages, i think i read 10 but alot of it just goes whooshhhhh over my head. nice article though and for your first major feature after your absence, its a testament to yourself and the support of the staff at bit-tech.
This makes me dizzy.. But kudos to Tim for the effort and for the dizzyness. I love BT for this. (Not to be taken up as any kind of physical effort. :-D )
With all of this in mind, it’s no surprise that AMD hasn’t changed the way power is delivered to the card. 75W of the board’s power is supplied via the PCI-Express interconnect (there’s no support for 150W power draws through the socket on PCIe 2.0 boards) in order to retain backwards compatibility with older motherboards
i am not sure in the above statment is true, on the amd 790 motherboards (prob FX ones as i can on my board m3a32-mpv) you can set the amount of power the PCI-e lane power can have, as i have read about it someware at some point, and the card will accept it (3870 did)
was quite sure as some users was overclocking there 3870 cards and could get more by setting the option in bios on amd based boards that suported the setting to givemore power down the PCI-e slot (you can even pick witch slot gets more power)
Originally Posted by leexgx was quite sure as some users was overclocking there 3870 cards and could get more by setting the option in bios on amd based boards that suported the setting to givemore power down the PCI-e slot (you can even pick witch slot gets more power)
I've managed to get around to retesting this and you're right... my bad - I've updated the article to reflect this. Having said that though, the card refuses to work without the 6-pin connector plugged in.
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The biggest shock for me, is the power consumption of the 4870x2. You would suspect it will be side by side with the Nvidia top card in idle power. Is this a design flaw? AMD said they made a power efficient 'something' on the cards to put power to a minimum with idle.
I thought the cards would shut down the 3D hardware in a 2D environment and become active when a application required the need for raw 3D power. Also the power it needs when in performance mode is incredible. Is the 483watts at the socket or the card itself? Its almost 120w more the the GTX280. Makes you wonder what a "GTX280 x2" would suck out of the wall.
kudos
fatman
What they didn't make enough when the were charging $400US for it?
Before or after the yule>?
New or improved architecture>?
i am not sure in the above statment is true, on the amd 790 motherboards (prob FX ones as i can on my board m3a32-mpv) you can set the amount of power the PCI-e lane power can have, as i have read about it someware at some point, and the card will accept it (3870 did)
I've managed to get around to retesting this and you're right... my bad - I've updated the article to reflect this. Having said that though, the card refuses to work without the 6-pin connector plugged in.