Power consumption numbers at Tom's Hardware w/gamer vid card

Dalbert · Post by **Dalbert** » Tue Apr 06, 2004 8:24 pm

Tom's Hardware did a story on a new video card w/GDDR3 memory, but the interesting part to the SPCR community is the power consumption readings:

http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/200 ... r3-11.html

The worst case is the Radeon 9800XT/nVidia 5950 Ultra in the P4 3.2 machine at full 3D gaming: 230 Watts. It would appear that this reading is on the AC side of the PSU (an Antec True Control 550W). At an efficiency of 75%, that means the DC draw is 173W. I guess it's true that many modern systems don't require a lot of power.

wumpus · Post by **wumpus** » Tue Apr 06, 2004 8:55 pm

Yeah, I saw that. Definitely interesting. Notice the low power champ, the 9600XT (500mhz / 300mhz). You can compare my vanilla radeon 9600 (300mhz / 200mhz) wattage numbers in this thread.

My P4 3.2 overvolted and 9800 pro draws 250w (!) from the wall at full gaming load according to the kill-a-watt. So that 230w is definitely accurate in my experience..

halcyon · Post by **halcyon** » Tue Apr 06, 2004 11:10 pm

It's a pity that they didn't use an inductive meter to measure voltage rail specific loads.

While 250W PSU might be enough for even the biggest gaming rig today, finding the right combination of +3.3V, +5V and +12V that suits one's components can be hard.

Especially if one doesn't know which lines are stressed