Power Consumption

Cooling modern video cards is becoming more and more difficult, especially when users are asking for quiet cooling solutions. That's why the engineers are now paying much more attention to power consumption of new video card designs.

For this test we measure power consumption of only the graphics card, via PCI-Express power connector(s) and PCI-Express bus slot. A Keithley Integra 2700 with 6.5 digits is used for all measurements. Again, the values here reflect card only power consumption measured at DC VGA card inputs, not the whole system.

The four result values are as following:

• Idle: Windows Vista Aero sitting at the desktop (1280x1024 32-bit) all windows closed, drivers installed. Card left to warm up in idle until power draw is stable.
• Average: 3DMark03 Nature at 1280x1024, 6xAA, 16xAF. This results in the highest power consumption. Average of all readings (12 per second) while the test was rendering (no title screen).
• Peak: 3DMark03 Nature at 1280x1024, 6xAA, 16xAF. Highest single reading during the test.
• Maximum: Furmark Stability Test at 1280x1024, 0xAA. This results in a very high non-game power consumption that can typically be reached only with stress testing applications. Card left running stress test until power draw converged to a stable value.

The power consumption of the MSI HD 4890 Cyclone is massive. It consumes significantly more power than the regular HD 4890 reference design. This is because the GPU voltage is a lot higher than on the reference design - I measured over 1.5V during load. To produce a card like the HD 4890 Cyclone SOC you need a large number of ASICs that can run high frequencies. The easiest way to reach such a goal is to increase the GPU voltage which helps with stability. A lot of AIBs do this because it is so cost effective. While a lot of people are worried about high voltages killing their GPU, there is no reason to be concerned about that. Even at increased voltage a GPU will easily hold several years, and should it break you can always RMA it. What should be more of a concern is that the higher power draw results in more heat that has to be removed from the GPU which means that the fan will generally have to run faster.