Power consumption of next gen video cards

fanerman91 · Post by **fanerman91** » Thu Jul 22, 2004 11:21 am

I heard that the new ones require 80-100 watts. It doesn't seem like a 300W PSU will be enough, will it?

SebRad · Post by **SebRad** » Thu Jul 22, 2004 11:46 am

Hi, they (6800 & X800) are not really any worse than the previous generation (5900 & 9800). Take a look at this link in this thread.
The biggest power draw they get is 240watt, not sure if that’s mains draw or corrected for PSU efficiency so even now 300w PSUs are still up to it.
Seb

shathal · Post by **shathal** » Thu Jul 22, 2004 12:47 pm

While that is correct from a pure wattage point of view, be aware that you need not only calculate your Total watts, but your Amps / power-rail voltage as well...

Inexplicable · Post by **Inexplicable** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 12:25 am

This article has some conflicting information compared to the German one. This shows the 6800U drawing 17W more than 5950U at full blast.

Here's another one. 6800U against 9800XT.

jojo4u · Post by **jojo4u** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 2:27 pm

Inexplicable wrote:This article has some conflicting information compared to the German one. This shows the 6800U drawing 17W more than 5950U at full blast.

Here's another one. 6800U against 9800XT.

"Full blast" on tomshardware is 3DMark 2003 where computerbase.de uses codecreatures. So there is no comparism possible. The idle figures are matching quite well.

The second URL is interesting, tanks!

wumpus · Post by **wumpus** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 9:16 pm

, because generally, if you are in the market for a £500 graphics card, chances are you are not going to be running it with a £10 power supply

fanerman91 · Post by **fanerman91** » Wed Jul 28, 2004 1:49 am

I'm not sure if my question was answered or not. Can anybody clarify?

zed939 · Post by **zed939** » Wed Jul 28, 2004 2:13 am

6800 Ultra is rated to work with a 350 Watt PSU or higher, since that was up at 480W before they brought it down i'd bet they made the rating as narrow as could be: You probably need a good brand 350W and no less to run.
I think Nvidia made a fair specification there at least.

6800 GT on the other hand is sufficed by 300 Watts, quite well seeing as how it beats the X800 XT in Doom3.

tay · Post by **tay** » Wed Jul 28, 2004 6:47 am

fanerman91 wrote:I'm not sure if my question was answered or not. Can anybody clarify?

Do some simple math by lookinig at your PSU rails.
CPU 100W or 8 Amps
Drives ~ 1 amp each max

Subtractinig this from your PSU rail limit should give you how much you have left for your video card. 6 Amps should be more than enough for your card iirc. Someone meeasured the 5V draw of current cards but I cant remember the thread. 5v rails are fine with most modern boards tho.