Power efficency of gaming PCs is bad

[SPBHM]

I think power usage went up right around the Athlon 64/Phenom and Pentium 4 days, before that Pentium III's were 15W and then Pentium 4's were 84W, but back then we used CRT's which were close to 75-100W now we have LCD/LED's that do 30W at best. Video cards varied too, my HD5770 I still have is about the same as my GTX750Ti, both around 65W, my 10 year old Nvidia FX 5700 was 130W (IIRC).

the last few pentium II were already around 25W, p3 katmai and Coppermine around 1GHz were over 30W, Athlon Thunderbird 1.4 was over 65W, p4 3.06 (2002/2003) was over 80W

according to google the FX 5700 was 25W, even the 5800 Ultra, famous for being to hot a noisy was 75W

GPUs were "low power" for longer than CPUs I think.
I think things like the 8800GTX really started to use a lot of power.

 

[soccerballtux]

8800GTX was awesome part. dudes who bought 2 for SLI were at the top of gaming mountain for a good 2 years, and were relevant with playable framerates for 4.

 

[SPBHM]

8800GTX was awesome part. dudes who bought 2 for SLI were at the top of gaming mountain for a good 2 years, and were relevant with playable framerates for 4.

it was,

but it used more power than the previous dual GPU card
but looking at it, the 2005 cards were also using quite a bit,

I guess the introduction of PCIE (2004/2005) allowed them to use a lot more power than before.

 

[readers]

it was,

but it used more power than the previous dual GPU card
but looking at it, the 2005 cards were also using quite a bit,

I guess the introduction of PCIE (2004/2005) allowed them to use a lot more power than before.

Why would that be the case? Since we had power connectors to video card long before that.

 

[cbn]

Why would that be the case? Since we had power connectors to video card long before that.

As I recall, 8800 GTX was one of the first cards (or maybe the first?) to need two PCIe 6 pin. (EDIT: 8800GTX was the first, as the HD 2900XT needing 6 pin and 8 pin was released after it)

This meant the person buying it needed a typical SLI certified power supply to power it.

 

[cbn]

but it used more power than the previous dual GPU card

Yep, the 7950 GX2 only needed a single 6 pin power connector:

 

[Zodiark1593]

Why would that be the case? Since we had power connectors to video card long before that.

The video card also benches as fast, if not faster than the dual gpu 7950 GX2. What was awesome is the spokesperson saying this eclipsed the PS3 before it (the ps3) even launched.

Of course, this was also back when no one gave a care ahout power use aside from if the psu could run it.

 

[TeknoBug]

Why would that be the case? Since we had power connectors to video card long before that.

Yeah I remember some cards needing the floppy drive connector, I hated that connector because it was easy to plug in wrong until a plastic guide was added.

 

[SPBHM]

Yeah I remember some cards needing the floppy drive connector, I hated that connector because it was easy to plug in wrong until a plastic guide was added.

well, because AGP as like what? 25W? so things started to require additional power

yes I remember my VGA in 2003 needing a floppy power connector, but the overall power of the card was really low compared to the stuff from the PCIE era

 

[ShintaiDK]

AGP Pro was up to 110W or so.

 

[SPBHM]

AGP Pro was up to 110W or so.

well, I never had any AGP pro card or slot, but checking wikipedia, I guess I'm wrong, AGP 3.0 could provide around 40W, still even a 9800PRO was using a little under 50W

or a x800xt using under 70

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/display/ati-powercons_4.html#sect0

and remember some Pentium 4s from that era already had a 115W TDP,

 

[_kapone]

Well...my main workstation is probably in that category as well. It's not a gaming machine per se...but...idle ~100w, when I'm actually using it (trading system), ~1000w.

Supermicro X10DRG-Q with dual e5 Xeons, three GTX 970 cards driving 9 monitors, with 128GB of RAM.

 

[AtenRa]

Even with a FX8150 OC to 4.7GHz paired with a GTX 480 is not using more than 400W peak power while Gaming, from the wall.

 

[slag]

"You don't need that power-hungry gaming PC w/ a 6-core CPU, SLI, and 1200W PSU. It's irresponsible."

Go to hell, it's none of your business.

ding ding ding.. winner. Power is cheap and abundant.

 

[Yuriman]

Food for thought:

1 horsepower = ~745w

Most small cars need in the range of 20HP to cruise on the highway, but a larger vehicle such as a truck or SUV can easily take 3-4x that. By choosing a more "irresponsible" vehicle, one can use ~30,000w more energy per unit time (at the crank, not even accounting for the 75% or more lost by inefficient combustion). And let's not even talk about "needlessly" large homes and air-conditioning/heating.

PCs contribute, for sure, but they're not a major part of the equation.

 

[know of fence]

Food for thought:

1 horsepower = ~745w

Most small cars need in the range of 20HP to cruise on the highway, but a larger vehicle such as a truck or SUV can easily take 3-4x that. By choosing a more "irresponsible" vehicle, one can use ~30,000w more energy per unit time (at the crank, not even accounting for the 75% or more lost by inefficient combustion). And let's not even talk about "needlessly" large homes and air-conditioning/heating.

PCs contribute, for sure, but they're not a major part of the equation.

1 horsepower = ~745w

Most small cars need in the range of 20HP to cruise on the highway, but a larger vehicle such as a truck or SUV can easily take 3-4x that. By choosing a more "irresponsible" vehicle, one can use ~30,000w more energy per unit time (at the crank, not even accounting for the 75% or more lost by inefficient combustion). And let's not even talk about "needlessly" large homes and air-conditioning/heating.

PCs contribute, for sure, but they're not a major part of the equation.[/QUOTE]

This analogy only makes sense if you imagine a taxi driver or a trucker who keeps his engine running all the time, to power the A/C, say. .
500 Watt can run up a cost of 1000 EUR in a year (22.8 cent/kWh) and not because 500 W is much but because the amount of hours in a year is a huge number (8766 h).

Watt is an amazing unit and we are very familiar with it from appliances, TDPs, light bulbs and ergometers. So I prefer to convert everything to a wattage, rather than comparing energy or CO2 emission.

Also 0.5 kW at the power outlet, means about 2kW in chemical energy stored in gas or coal at the power station.

An average person who drives 15000 km/a, at 15 km/l ( gas consumes 1000 liters/a of gas with an energy density of 32.4 MJ/l ).
So a total of 32.4 GJ of energy is converted to Heat in a year by your every day car, averaged over/divided by the amount of seconds in a year equals 1027 W (= J/s).
About half of 2000 W what the power station consumes to create 500W of electicity.

Assuming he amount of CO2 created is proportional to energy used, so it it remarkable that a PC that runs 24/7 at 250 W pumps as much CO2 into the atmosphere as an average car over the year.