[mythtv-users] Energe Conservation, was: Happy Anniversary

Brian Wood beww at beww.org
Sat Sep 23 19:53:09 UTC 2006


On Sep 23, 2006, at 12:51 PM, Michael T. Dean wrote:

>
>
> And the next-generation ATI card (R600) will take up to /250W/!!!
> Granted, it only pulls that kind of power when it's doing heavy-duty
> graphics processing, but still--that's more than 3x the power a PCI
> express slot can provide.  (That's gonna be a "mole" lotta molex
> connectors on that card.)  It's actually double the max power an R580+
> takes (125W).  Even the dual-GPU X7950 GX2 maxes out at 145W.
>
> So, as winter comes on full force in the northern hemisphere at the
> beginning of next year and the R600 gets released, consider investing
> that money you saved up to buy a new heater on an R600.  After all,  
> how
> many polygons per second can a Trane do?  (Of course, based on  
> previous
> track records, you'll probably have your brand new R600 heater just in
> time for summer--assuming the January/February launch they're  
> currently
> planning.)
>
> And, it looks like the NVIDIA G80 will probably be in the 175W range.
> Video cards are definitely getting power hungry.

They certainly are, and with some gaming rigs running 2 or even 4  
graphics cores it's getting just plain ridiculous. I suspect there is  
less motivation to reduce GPU power consumption because many gamers  
*like* having power-hogging systems.

"Pong" never needed all that power, and that's about the extent of my  
computer gaming experience :-)

But I don't think Myth systems need anything close to what the recent  
game systems want.

I haven't made the jump to 0.20 yet, is a 5200 pretty much still the  
baseline for a graphics card, even with the GL screens and HD ?



More information about the mythtv-users mailing list