A Thread About My New Graphics Card And its TDP

[toblix]

<p><span style="font-size: 12px;">(Too many capital letters? You tell me.)</span><br />

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My graphics card has been acting up as of late. At least, I'm pretty sure it's my graphics card, since what happens is, when I play a game, suddenly the screen freezes, then it shows a weird crazy brown pattern, and everything stops responding. Weirdly, the sound continues normally, but I can't even toggle caps lock (which, now that I think about it, leads me to believe the problem might not be the graphics card after all) so I have to hit reset, and everything's fine after that.<br />

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ANYWAY, since I'm (or was) pretty sure it's the graphics card, and I wasn't planning to build a new computer until next year, around Sim City or Dishonored, I ordered a temporary card to hold me over. Now, my current card, an AMD 5870 is so old I can't even buy one anymore, so I thought, okay, let's get some other okay card, and, even though I'm going to go with Nvidia for my next computer, I thought I'd go with another AMD now, so I can just switch her out and bob's your uncle.<br />

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ANYWAY, I was checking the stats on my current card versus my new one to see how many more CPEY/GGR channels I'd be able to parallax bitstream in 92bps supermode when I noticed this weird thing, and this is the real subject of this post, and this thread if you know what's good for you:<br />

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<strong>This new graphics card I ordered, an AMD 7870, though more powerful (I assume!), uses less power than my current one. Weird, right!?</strong> One would think it was the other way, that the more powerful the card, the more power(!) it would consume. This can't go on, obviously; the <em>Laws of Physics </em>tells us you can't end up with a graphics card that simultaneously draws sweet ass graphics on your monitor whilst also powering your computer! Also, the new graphics card has not only twice the R.A.M., but also twice the fans (it has two fans)! This could mean two things: half the temperature, twice the noise, neither, or both. Whichever way it goes, I'm in for a hell of a ride!<br />

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Sorry if this thread was a disappointment. I tried looking for a generic hardware thread but failed (I didn't try <em>that</em> hard)</p>

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<p><em>edit:</em> Oh shit, I forgot to add references:</p>

<ol>

<li>Wikipedia et al (2012), <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_AMD_graphics_processing_units#Evergreen_.28HD_5xxx.29_series"><em>Comparison of AMD graphics processing units</em></a></li>

</ol>

[toblix]

Holy shit.

[Nappi]

MOSFET scaling is one of those rare things in life where the benefits largely overshadow the drawbacks and you can get more transistors, higher speed and less power consumption at the same time without a significant trade-off (yet). The main problem of course is that reducing the linewidth ever further has become pretty fucking hard (as people in the industry probably would put it).

[toblix]

Fucking MOSFET scaling, man.

What worries me now is that I may get the same problem with the new card, and then I'm stuck with a graphics card I really don't need, and a computerful of components I have to diagnose. Maybe it's the one of the RAM sticks, maybe it's the MIDI keyboard, maybe it's the PSU. Whatever it is, I'm in for one hell of a ride!

[Twig]

What the hell happened to that first post!

Getting a new video card is an exciting thing. That's all I got to say, really.