Holy Crap. I thought all this new spangly gubbins was supposed to be more efficient. Had my GTX580 in now a few months and the eleky bill has doubled. WTF.
Are you spending more time on the 'puter now that you've got a fancy graphics card? Are there any other contributing factors, e.g. triple monitors or using a 30" Dell?
Unfortunately that is a major problem with modern high end computers. Only thing you can do is aside from not using it is to get some sort of clean energy power source. A friend of mine runs all his PC equipment off a dedicated solar panel. It pays it self off relatively quickly tbh.
Hah, you think your bill is bad because of gaming? Head over to the folding section - they'll tell you about electricity bills
Folding...Those guys must be on a huge wage. I've never seen the point in folding... doing somebody elses work for them, most of us get screwed enough at work. used to use a GTX295 (2 screens) and a 8800GT (1 screen). I've cut back to 2 screens early in the year using the 580. Took one loop out as the 580 is quiet enough. 920 chip clocked a 4.2 doesn't do much more damage, been like this since the Rampage II X was released. The main rig is on from 5pm ish till 2am ish, pulling around 580W idle. (corrected typo) Cisco lab (couple of routers / switches) on every now and then. Media PC on for Mrs during evening. Server and VMs 24/7. Then theirs 4 lizards which have UV and heat on from 6am ish - 9pm ish, but I've had these for years, so ultimatley my finger still points at the GTX580. Hot things use more power, maybe I should put the 2nd loop back in and see what happens, though it'll be £80ish for a block. Can't win Infact: its been decided...drive to scan and pick up a block on saturday.
The logic of additional cooling to reduce electricity bills is very ... dumb. An efficient power supply could help though. Overclocking increase draw quite a bit so moderate that down a bit.
Energy in = energy out so having better cooling won't make a noticeable difference to your energy consumption.
It will still consume the same power, plus the power required to drive the extra water flow minus the power for the fan. You can get a Kill-a-watt meter to confirm how much your PC is pulling. Your old graphics setup definitely drew more power than your new one, a 295 drew nearly 300w with furmark, and 8800GT's weren't exactly renowned for being low power when idle.
yeah thing that pisses me off about folding.. if they were really doing it for the greater good (as many folders are).. they would have written a client that worked for ati cards, which are just leagues faster than anything nvidia has but since they are all about kissing huangs ass.. it won't happen- they need to keep the lie alive.. but at the same time they are hurting the folding effort because most with ati cards won't fold as it's not even worth it think they are waiting for nvidia to come up with something that actually beats ati in gpugpu.. so they won't write the ati client that shows the lie until nvidia can make a such a card.. it's all part of the deal they've obviously made sure folders will be happy to know they've been folding at half speed because there is no ati client.. unless nvidias next gen cards are different- I don't even care anymore
I'll ask him but I guess it's fairly simple. Solar panel to UPS/battery with a PC plugged in. I notice you are in St. Lucia so with all that sunshine It'll be a good investment.
Much appreciated. And yes, all that sunshine could be put to better use . I usually go for GPU's that have mid-range to high performance but they have to be low-power. works well since i game at 1024 x 768 in most games just fine. I hadly notice the higher resolution when i crank it up anyway. So far i've saved a bunch on power bills with my 450.
I very much doubt it, the machine in my spec doesn't pull that under full load. 555 is the highest I've got from the wall ever and that is with Prime64 and Furmark running. It doesn't go much above 380 when gaming and is around 170 when idle, but that is with 2 graphics cards, I expect it would be 40-50W less if it were only 1.
