I am shopping for a replacement graphics accelerator card (GAC) on my own, because my usual tech support chap is too slow to respond ( give or take a few fortnights ).

My burnt-out ATI Radeon 3650 consumed or generated (I am not certain which) 300 Watts - according to the package blurb.

The shop is selling an ATI Radeon 5500 which is marked as 400 Watts.  Holy Smokes, Chiroptera-Man !  

If a high-resolution render takes overnight....  how environmentally-friendly can using Poser be ?!

I don't understand GAC tech too well, but surely there could be greener GAC technology ?!

You can use a lot of electricity to do a fast render.  Or you can stretch out that same electricity to do the same render slower.  Take your pick.

If your computer was built in 1960, how big would the building have to be to house the thing and how many tubes would it use?  Then add air-conditioning to it.

The 3650 is rated at only 65w and the 5500 series at 40w by ATI/AMD itself. It is very unlikely that either of them are taking 300w/400w. Some marketing guy probably got too enthusiastic.

For reference as to how high 400w is, note that the current fastest GAC by ATI, the 5970, with 2 whole GPU running together in it, still only takes 320w max (And only 50w at idle) A 5500 with the small cooler it has at 400w would melt a hole through your motherboard, your desk and possibly your floor.

The card will not consume 400watts.... It actually only consumes 39watts max and around 10 watts idle....

The 400watt your reading is the minimum system requirements for the entire system (i.e you ideally want at least a 400watt power supply in your computer)...

The reason its a higher requirement is because its a newer card and its expected to be in a newer system with more power demanding hardware... Though saying that i ran a PSU calculator test and interestingly when i set the calculator to have roughly the same card as the one your thinking of getting the PSU requirements came back lower than your old card... in short your new card is more power efficient ;)

heres the link to the PSU calculator i used incase you want to see for yourself ;)
www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

 Thanks for all the helpful comments, and the link.

I'll go check out more cards, though. I don't think the motherboard can support the latest cards.

In stores I see game computers using over 1000watt power supplies.  These are the HD cards used on dual TVs.  They usually have 3 hard drives in them, too, configured as raid and such.  Mine has a quiet fan(s), so I don't notice the potential nuclear bomb on my desk (though it is old school designed).

This thread intrigues me.. because my old computer that I'm still using for 3d renders finally had its power supply die on me... and I realized I only had a 160W power supply, and I was using 3 internal hard drives, one DVD burner, and a GeForce 7600 GS. Wonder if I was underpowering things? c.c

" If a high-resolution render takes overnight....  how environmentally-friendly can using Poser be ?!"

Hook it up to a battery with a crank so you can generate the electricity turning the crank.

Please explain how running a computer harms the environment.

Poser doesn't use the GPU for rendering anyway, so the power consumption of the graphics card shouldn't be much greater than at idle

Quote -
Please explain how running a computer harms the environment.

Anything that consumes electricity will potentially harm the environment UNLESS you are getting 100% of your energy from solar panels or windmills /water turbines

Ever heard of CO2? ;) If not, then you're probably the last person in the civilized world who can say that L

Quote - Ever heard of CO2? ;) If not, then you're probably the last person in the civilized world who can say that L

Pretty soon we won't be allowed to exhale.

Methane is bad too. Don't fart!

Yes, cork both ends.  Cork the whales, too.  It'll save our planet.

Quote - "Please explain how running a computer harms the environment.

Well there are a lot of nasty materials that are used in the manufacture of computers, and if you throw an old computer into a landfill thats technically a contamination of the landfill. ok i suppose its just a trace contamination, but its still a contamination...

Also your power supply can play a large part in how environmentally friendly your computer can be, cheap power supplys have poor efficiency, in short they need more mains electricity to convert into the power that your computer needs which is very wastefull. these days its best to pay that little bit more for a high efficiency power supply... the power supply in my computer has roughly a 80 - 90% efficiency which means its drawing less power from the mains which saves me money in electricity bills, also it helps the environment :D

"Ever heard of CO2? ;) If not, then you're probably the last person in the civilized world who can say that L"

Yes, I've heard of the whole CO2 global warming scam. 

Talk about saving money, that's fine.  Talk about saving the environment from a non-existent threat is ridiculous.

Quote - Poser doesn't use the GPU for rendering anyway, so the power consumption of the graphics card shouldn't be much greater than at idle

It is much greater then idle, especially if you do use openGL. It sure isn't as much as when you play one of the newer games, but it sure isn't idle, not even close to idle.

You don't need the newest powerhouse gfx card for Poser, that's a waste of money. You can choose a less power consuming model and still get the best out of poser.  Let's look at it from a different point of view..... if you really want to save the environment get rid of your desktop and get a laptop instead. My desktop used almost 500 watts to run (including monitor), my laptop uses 90 watts max. Also manufacturing a laptop is a lot less demanding for the environment then a desktop system.