best mid range gfx card with best power consumption?

[SimianR]

i had Asus GTX 960 for few months about 6-7 months ago cause I wanted to play the Witcher 3. I gave up on the game and sold the card. Fast forward today, and I am looking again for a video card that will play witcher 3 and perhaps Wow/Diablo 3 @1200 resolution. So far it seems like not much has changed since April/May of last year and the GTX 960 is still king when it comes to the overall value and efficiency. My power supply is only about 350Watts and that is one of the reasons that I originally went with GTX960. It seems like I will be picking up the same card again as I know it will suite me just fine for what I need.

I hate to say it but it really seems like in that 6-7 months saving some cash and grabbing a better power supply would have worked wonders in this case. Seems like a lot of trouble to have to avoid the higher power use cards and be stuck with a card that you end up selling because it can't play new/demanding titles very well.

 

[xorbe]

As an nv user, nv dual screen can suck power too, or at least it used to, if the screens weren't a matched pair.

Also, my nv card (TiX) sucks power if I leave VirtualBox running even when the screen powers down. Notable power, like 64W vs 130W wall watts (+66W a doubling of system power!) I know it's the gpu not cpu, as cpu is idle, and MSI AB shows the gpu clock spun up. 960 is advantageous in this instance.

 

[Blue_Max]

Sorry I haven't responded in a while. I don't care about power use while gaming, as it's so rare that I do so any more. so a difference in 40-50 w when i'm gaming doesn't make a difference.

If you don't game with your video card, is there anything you DO need a better video card for?

The difference of 10-20W (guessing) in idle is going to cost so little in electricity over 1-3 years, a new video card will NEVER be able to pay for itself in the cost of electricity alone.

 

[evident]

If you don't game with your video card, is there anything you DO need a better video card for?

The difference of 10-20W (guessing) in idle is going to cost so little in electricity over 1-3 years, a new video card will NEVER be able to pay for itself in the cost of electricity alone.

For the times I do play games, duh! what little gaming i do i do on my pc. i have no consoles.

As an nv user, nv dual screen can suck power too, or at least it used to, if the screens weren't a matched pair.

Also, my nv card (TiX) sucks power if I leave VirtualBox running even when the screen powers down. Notable power, like 64W vs 130W wall watts (+66W a doubling of system power!) I know it's the gpu not cpu, as cpu is idle, and MSI AB shows the gpu clock spun up. 960 is advantageous in this instance.

That really sucks. I never measured power draw on my 7770 w/ 2 monitors, perhaps i should.

 

[Headfoot]

The power consumption matter is settled. You've said you care about low idle power. Every card since 28nm hit on both sides has good idle power consumption unless its being used in corner case ways (certain high end monitor configs, like xorbe says w/ certain virtualization workloads). If you're using your computer in a typical fashion its not worth worrying about.

Next is what is your budget, so you can buy the fastest thing in that budget, sounds like it's around $200. The fastest thing you can get would be a used R9 290. New is a different kettle of fish, but none of it gets close to the 290 @ 200

 

[buklau]

+1 on used 290

 

[Leyawiin]

Or a used GTX 780 for slightly under $200 (saw one in a forum for $175 recently).

 

[Piroko]

That really sucks. I never measured power draw on my 7770 w/ 2 monitors, perhaps i should.

You don't have to measure it, open GPU-Z and look at the Sensors tab, GPU core clock and GPU memory clock at idle. If I recall they should be 300 MHz and 150 MHz for a HD7770. If you see 300 MHz and 1000 MHz then your card boosts its clock in multi monitor setup and will consume some 10W more.

As for multi monitor, GCN1.2 pushed the number of pixels up considerably until the card starts bumping the idle clocks as far as I know (and it has more intermediate clock steps). The GTX960 will probably still beat it at that, but don't expect a revelation.