Comments on: First look: ATI Radeon HD 4830

By: David Wright

David Wright — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 11:54:59 +0000

No, I’m just more interested in my electricity bill than absolute fps…

For the little extra performance the 4850 gives, over the 280GT, they use a heck of a lot more power.

If you use the PC for average work, during the day, not pushing its 3D performance, the difference works out over €100 a year in electricity. That makes the initial price of the nVidia seem irrelevant.

That said both nVidia and ATi need to really look at toning down the power consumption of their cards…

By: Daniel

Daniel — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 11:20:37 +0000

David, if you read this:

http://www.custompc.co.uk/reviews/605070/ati-radeon-hd-4830.html

you’ll find that the slightly inferior nVidia to the 4850, the 9800GT, actually uses only 20W less power than the 4850, and the 4830 uses 20W less than the GT [see the linked graph on that page]. The ATI’s are both far better value, and even the 4830 outperforms the 9800GT in many cases!

Maybe you work for nVidia marketing and you believe the 8600GS is equivalent?

By: David Wright

David Wright — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 14:31:45 +0000

No mention of its power consumption. I know the 4850 uses 40-60W more on idle than the equivalent nVidia, and over 100W at full power – depending on implementation.

I hope this model is a little more competitive…