Power Consumption (Idle and Gaming)

We tested the power consumption with a Watts Up? Pro power meter, using the device to record the total system power consumption at the wall socket, while we ran three sets of four runs of Crysis in DX10 at 1,920 x 1,200.

Using the data recorded by the meter we could determine the peak output, the consistent minimum and the average load over the entire run of tests.

As both ATI and Nvidia test benches are now identical Core i7 systems, we can accurately determine the apples to apples difference of what power both PCs take to run.



While the Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 Atomic's idle power consumption is roughly the same as a stock card at idle thanks to the card's Catalyst drivers clocking the card down when not under heavy load, the demands of an extra 150MHz on the core have a clear effect under heavy load, upping our high end Core i7 test system's power consumption from 317W with a stock HD 4980 to a meaty 365W. Although that's still more than manageable, it's a notable difference, and rather unsurprisingly for a card that's clocked 18 per cent faster than a stock card, represents a 15 per cent increase in power consumption.