Looking for Low (idle) Power Graphics Card

[tomshardware486]

I'm going to be upgrading from G41 platform to X58. I'm looking for a graphics card that has low idle power consumption (don't care how much power it consumes while gaming). I'm looking in the $50 range at cards such as ATI 4350, 4650, and 4850 as well as nVidia GTX 210. Is there much of a difference in idle power consumption among these cards (assume all passively cooled). I assume power scales with number of processing cores. I'm set on the X58 platform....already have the CPU.

 

[jaguarskx]

If your primary concern is extremely low idle power consumption, then consider the GT 430:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/gigabyte-geforce-gt430_4.html#sect0


You definitely do not want the HD 4850 since that uses around 50w of power when idling (from what I remember).

 

[stillerfan15]

Why not look into the low end ATI 5000 series? If anything they probably use less power than a comparable 4000 series card.
Dave

 

[ko888]

Passively cooled ATI Radeon HD 5450 GDDR3 fits within the criteria.

 

[Zenthar]

Not the actual topic, but why would one get an X58 board and a low-end GPU???

 

[tomshardware486]

Not the actual topic, but why would one get an X58 board and a low-end GPU???

I was given the CPU...I mostly plan to use the computer for running machine learning algorithms and a distributed computing project (Rosetta@Home). Fast GPU not needed...yet.

@jaguarskx, thanks for the links. It does look like the 5000 series consumes less power at idle than the 4000 series. Actually, it looks comparable to integrated graphics at idle.

 

[tomshardware486]

And yes, the 4850 would use around 50 watts of power:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/ati-radeon-hd4550_4.html

 

[jaguarskx]

^^^

Actually, the HD 4850 is not represented in the link you provided. No need to worry 'cause the found a power consumption chart with the HD 4850; it's actually been measured to be 41w not the roughly 50w I initially mentioned:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/force3d-hd-4870_5.html#sect0

 

[tomshardware486]

I think the previous link had a 4830 on it so I assumed that the 4850 would consume more.