Power Consumption (Idle and Gaming)
Putting a realistic, repeatable load on a GPU to get a decent idea of its real world power consumption and thermal output has long been something with which we've experimented here at
bit-tech. We've found that synthetic benchmarks such as FurMark thrash the GPU constantly, which simply isn't reflective of how a GPU will be used when gaming.
It's such a hardcore test that any GPU under scrutiny is almost guaranteed to hit its thermal limit; the mark at which the card's firmware will kick in, speeding up the fan to keep the GPU within safe temperature limits. Conversely, simply leaving a game such as Crysis running at a certain point also isn't reflective of real-world use. There's no guarantee that the GPU is being pushed as hard as other titles might push it, and the load will vary between play-throughs.
We used to use the Canyon Flight test of 3DMark 06, as this was a punishing and repeatable test. However, we've now adopted
Unigine's Heaven 3.0 benchmark, as its DirectX 11 features will stress all the parts of a modern GPU. We use the default settings and a resolution of 2,560 x 1,600. We then hit the Benchmark button and watch the power draw from the wall between the grass field scene and the second dragon scene - this is the toughest portion of the test for both Nvidia and AMD hardware.
-
AMD Radeon HD 7750 1GB
-
AMD Radeon HD 7770 1GB
-
AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB
-
Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 1GB
-
AMD Radeon HD 7950 3GB
-
AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB
-
Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB
-
AMD Radeon HD 7950 3GB with Boost
-
AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB GHz Edition
-
Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 2GB
-
Nvidia GeForce GTX 670 2GB
-
Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 2GB
-
AMD Radeon HD 7850 2GB
-
EVGA GeForce GTX 650 Ti 1GB SSC
-
Nvidia GeForce GTX 690 4GB
-
Club 3D Radeon HD 7990 6GB
-
Asus Ares II
-
Asus Ares II x 2 (CrossFire)
-
71
-
72
-
75
-
76
-
80
-
80
-
80
-
80
-
80
-
80
-
80
-
81
-
86
-
87
-
90
-
107
-
126
-
159
0
25
50
75
100
125
150
175
System Power consumption in Watts
-
AMD Radeon HD 7750 1GB
-
Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 1GB
-
AMD Radeon HD 7770 1GB
-
EVGA GeForce GTX 650 Ti 1GB SSC
-
AMD Radeon HD 7850 2GB
-
AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB
-
Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 2GB
-
Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB
-
AMD Radeon HD 7950 3GB
-
AMD Radeon HD 7950 3GB with Boost
-
Nvidia GeForce GTX 670 2GB
-
AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB
-
Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 2GB
-
AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB GHz Edition
-
Nvidia GeForce GTX 690 4GB
-
Club 3D Radeon HD 7990 6GB
-
Asus Ares II
-
Asus Ares II x 2 (CrossFire)
-
112
-
126
-
145
-
166
-
173
-
192
-
205
-
224
-
227
-
240
-
241
-
265
-
273
-
314
-
389
-
511
-
590
-
1018
System Power consumption in Watts
Thermal Performance (Idle and Gaming)
We also have GPU-Z running in the background, and leave the Unigine benchmark running for ten minutes to record a peak GPU temperature. We present the temperature as a delta T (the difference between the temperature of the GPU and the ambient temperature in our labs).
-
AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB
-
EVGA GeForce GTX 650 Ti 1GB SSC
-
Asus Ares II
-
Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 2GB
-
AMD Radeon HD 7770 1GB
-
Nvidia GeForce GTX 690 4GB
-
AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB GHz Edition
-
Nvidia GeForce GTX 670 2GB
-
Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 2GB
-
Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti
-
AMD Radeon HD 7750 1GB
-
Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 1GB
-
AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB
-
AMD Radeon HD 7950 3GB
-
AMD Radeon HD 7950 3GB with Boost
-
Club 3D Radeon HD 7990 6GB
-
6
-
8
-
9
-
9
-
10
-
10
-
11
-
11
-
11
-
11
-
12
-
14
-
14
-
15
-
16
-
20
Delta T in °C
-
Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 1GB
-
Asus Ares II
-
EVGA GeForce GTX 650 Ti 1GB SSC
-
AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB
-
Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 2GB
-
AMD Radeon HD 7750 1GB
-
Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti
-
AMD Radeon HD 7770 1GB
-
AMD Radeon HD 7950 3GB with Boost
-
Club 3D Radeon HD 7990 6GB
-
AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB
-
Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 2GB
-
AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB GHZ Editon
-
Nvidia GeForce GTX 670 2GB
-
AMD Radeon HD 7950 3GB
-
Nvidia GeForce GTX 690 4GB
-
29
-
36
-
37
-
40
-
41
-
42
-
43
-
44
-
50
-
53
-
53
-
54
-
54
-
55
-
57
-
63
Delta T in °C
*as there's no stock model of the HD 7850 2GB, it is not included in these graphs
Read our
performance analysis.
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