And we start the week off with a look at the PowerColor HD 5870:

PowerColor Radeon HD 5870 Review

PowerColor Radeon HD 5870 Review

It's not the first, the 4770 is.

quote hiigaran

im pretty impressed by the power consumption difference between this, and the 4890. almost 100 watts difference. this still adds to the confusion of why it needs better cooling though.

Don't forget the 4890 he tested is an overclocked model and is really pushing the RV770 core, probably needing quite a bit of voltage. That explains the high power consumption compared to the 5870. However, the 4890 has a custom cooling solution, hence the lower temps. But if you look closer at the temperature chart, the 5870 actually idles cooler, thanks to better power management and newer manufacturing process.

That HD 4890 tested is also a really overclocked model -- one of the fastest out actually. So it had pretty big power req's when being pushed.

quote hiigaran

hah, yeah, over 440 watts being drawn from it. now put two of those into crossfire

so, just for clarification, a standard, stock settings 4890 would use about how much power? 275w? 300w?

440W is the whole system. I don't have hard numbers, but there shouldn't be a huge difference with a stock clocked card. The OC'ed one might draw like.. 25-40 more watts.

Also, as the manufacturing process gets smaller, voltage requirements go down and since clocks remain comparable, power consumption drops significantly.

The heats actually not to bad provided you've got good airflow and a good cooler.

The GPU will add a bit more heat to the Case, but this is true regardless of the video card.

The fan shroud should hopefully direct most of the hot air out of the case.

quote hiigaran

i wasnt referring to the internal case temperatures. i was referring to the actual video card processor getting hot.

Unless you're overclocking, temperatures don't really matter, the cores are designed to handle it

Of course if it's hitting 90+ Celsius then you probably have an airflow issue