PowerColor Brings Green to Video

Video cards, that is. The new entries by PowerColor, long time ATi partner and video card supplier claim to be powerful, yet save energy when compared to the competing models from nVidia.

This is a nice idea, but tends to buck the current trends in system design for gamers, who would be the users most interested in these offerings. Currently, savings in CPU power and reductions in power supply size, through increases in efficiency are made, all in order to increase available power to gargantuan video cards, to enable the greatest frame rates, or highest playing resolutions.

There are, however, many who will try to adjust their systems for a balance, knowing that the playing of games is but one part of the entire usage of the computer.

These people will be using a mid line card, and perhaps relying on the hybrid SLI or hybrid Crossfire functions of Vista and current drivers.

The HD 4650  and HD 4350 cards will do this job nicely, and, from the PowerColor specifications, save between 24% and 38%. Over time this generous savings would show up in lower electric bills, and, for the environmentalists (isn’t that all of us, about now?) less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

from Tech Connect

AMD AIB partner PowerColor has started playing the ‘green/eco’ game too by introducing a new line-up of graphics cards, the Go! Green series. The first products to be part of the Go! Green family are nothing all that special as they are the previously-released HD4650 and HD4350 Silent Cooling Solution (SCS) models.

Coming equipped with passive coolers, the HD4650 SCS3 and HD4350 SCS are claimed to consume 38% and 24% less power than their competitors the GeForce 9500 GT and 8400 GS, respectively, have 512MB of DDR2 memory clocked at 800 MHz, GPUs set to 600 MHz, and DirectX 10.1 support. The HD4650 SCS3 has a 128-bit memory interface and 320 Stream Processors, while its little eco-friendly sister has a 64-bit interface and 80 SPs.

The HD4650 SCS3 and HD4350 SCS are available in European stores priced at about 47 and 31 Euro, respectively. PowerColor’s full PCIe graphics card line-up can be viewed here.

green boxes, to reinforce the idea –

While PowerColor is not as large a name as Sapphire or HIS, the company usually stays with the reference designs, instead differentiating itself with bundling extras or pricing bonuses. This is very nice when the ATi reference drivers are usable, rather than having to depend on customized versions from the board producer. HIS is guilty of this, producing excellent boards, but having a downfall of dependence on drivers that must be customized, and a rather lazy update schedule. also, one can assume that AMD will be around longer than PowerColor, or any of these other partners, and more inclined to maintain drivers that work.

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