Historian GURUS Needed: Power draw comparison 5830 v. 4850

[bill_me_out]

Hello all,

I happen to have two graphic cards lying around: One is AX5830 PCS+, and the other is AX4850 1GB, all from PowerColor.

As I stopped playing games for quite some time, and only doing Office stuff, playing and streaming vids -- I'd like to find out which one to keep and which one to sell.

So the question comes down to: Which one consumes power more -- so that one can be discarded.

I've read many reviews but they seem to have numbers from full system load. Some, like the ones in this chart shows 4850 to be more power hungry.

But I'm not sure about that.

Can you help me with this comparison?

 

[96Firebird]

What you're probably most concerned about is idle power usage, which seems to be lower on the 5830:

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/EAH_5830_DirectCu/26.html

Gaming power consumption looks to be very close between the two looking at TPU's numbers above. I know these aren't using the exact cards you mentioned, but you'd be hard pressed to find a perfect comparison.

 

[SPBHM]

What you're probably most concerned about is idle power usage, which seems to be lower on the 5830:

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/EAH_5830_DirectCu/26.html

Gaming power consumption looks to be very close between the two looking at TPU's numbers above. I know these aren't using the exact cards you mentioned, but you'd be hard pressed to find a perfect comparison.

there is just to much variation from one card to another to be sure, he is running a different model of 4850 and 5830 compared to this test, and I can find other 5830 using almost 10W more than the TPU numbers
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-5830,2564-13.html

to be sure he would have to test his cards,
but looking at all the numbers I think the power usage is kind of close between the 2 cards... so it probably makes more sense to keep the 5830 since it's newer (better win 10 drivers, DX11 support).

 

[bill_me_out]

there is just to much variation from one card to another to be sure, he is running a different model of 4850 and 5830 compared to this test, and I can find other 5830 using almost 10W more than the TPU numbers
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-5830,2564-13.html

to be sure he would have to test his cards,
but looking at all the numbers I think the power usage is kind of close between the 2 cards... so it probably makes more sense to keep the 5830 since it's newer (better win 10 drivers, DX11 support).

Hello again,

Thanks for the feedback. Let me ask another question:

Lowest from the newest AMD/NVIDIA cards seem to provide more than my basic needs. Would you recommend getting one for the reasoning at hand? And specifically, which one in terms of power consumption.

 

[Headfoot]

You probably don't need to buy a card at all. I'd just use the integrated GPU on any modern processor

 

[Piroko]

You could buy something like the soon-to-be-released RX460 or the still decent GTX750 (both around 100$?) for the modern video decode acceleration, but the onboard graphics of your system will probably be enough already.

The HD4000 series had rather unimpressive idle power consumption iirc, so I'd go for the 5830 between the two.

 

[SPBHM]

Hello again,

Thanks for the feedback. Let me ask another question:

Lowest from the newest AMD/NVIDIA cards seem to provide more than my basic needs. Would you recommend getting one for the reasoning at hand? And specifically, which one in terms of power consumption.

it really depends on what is the power cost where you live and how many hours you run the PC per day,

I think upgrading the 5830 to a newer low end card (like GT 720, r7 240), could potentially save you 15W idle or even more... but if you don't run it really like 24/7 it's probably not something to worry about.

You probably don't need to buy a card at all. I'd just use the integrated GPU on any modern processor

but this is a good point, if you have integrated graphics...

The HD4000 series had rather unimpressive idle power consumption iirc, so I'd go for the 5830 between the two.

not really, I think people say that because of the 4870 and 4770, but both these cards had bad idle power draw because they were early GDDR5 cards, and had fixed memory clocks.

the GDDR3 cards like 4670 and some 4800s had pretty impressive idle power (some reviews show the 4670 under 10W consistently) for the time.

so his 4850 could also be quite good, but... only testing to know for sure, since the results from one model of 4850 can easily be completely different from another...

like I have a crappy xfx 4670 DDR2 with fixed voltages, no 2D voltages and the idle power usage is a lot worse than the reference model.

 

[KingFatty]

Before you decide, you might want to check the market prices in your area (or eBay) to see if this is worth the hassle. You might need to expend more of your time/effort than you could recoup by selling either card. One option might be to offer it for free on craigslist, so that you gain a non-monetary satisfaction/karma for helping out fellow computer enthusiasts. That might be worth far more to you than the price you make trying to sell either card.

But another point to consider is these cards will end up costing you money if you use them, due to poor power efficiency. Instead, you should not use either of the cards, and use your integrated graphics. This will save power/money over time, so you'll get the added bonus of feeling efficient and good for the environment.

If you really want an eye-opener, invest $15 in buying a kill-a-watt power meter, and you can use that to precisely check your particular computer using either card, during idle and during gaming/load. Then you can compare to using the integrated graphics when idle and during gaming. Then do the math, over a year you will save money that is more than the money you could make selling both cards. Combination of poor demand for those cards, and poor power efficiency, and how good modern integrated graphics are (both performance and power efficiency).

 

[eddman]

Hello again,

Thanks for the feedback. Let me ask another question:

Lowest from the newest AMD/NVIDIA cards seem to provide more than my basic needs. Would you recommend getting one for the reasoning at hand? And specifically, which one in terms of power consumption.

What's your CPU, exactly?

Others are right. If your integrated graphics is good enough, you won't even need a graphics card.

If you are planning on starting to play games, then you could wait for the upcoming 470 and 460, or the 3GB 1060 and 1050 (/1050 Ti?).

 

[Dresdenboy]

That reminds me, that I still have a 5830 somewhere lying around.

It doesn't sound like you've a CPU with integrated GPU, which others suggested to use. So a new board/CPU would surely cost much more, than say a last gen small dGPU. Even the Kill-A-Watt costs.

How about:

• Sell both cards. Here in Germany I see ~20-30€ for the 5830 and ~10-20€ for the 4850. Depending on demand you might get $25-50 for them, too.
• Then get a last gen low power card for that (+$20 max.) and save enough power during office use compared to the other cards to have a positive ROI after 1-2 years.
• Furthermore the newer card will support more video formats in hardware and be more power efficient while playing them back.

While the systems used for testing surely changed, you might compare the idle system power between the bigger sister cards here (5870, 4870 - idle should be roughly the same for your cards):
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU12/413
and newer, smaller ones here:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU14/832
The GPU 2015/2016 charts don't contain the smaller models, BTW.