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.

To measure power consumption the whole system's mains power draw was measured. This means that these numbers include CPU, Memory, HDD, Video card and PSU inefficiency.

The load value was obtained by running 3DMark03 Nature at 1280x1024, 6xAA, 16xAF. This results in the highest power consumption. While the test was running, power consumption was recorded. The highest reading is listed in the following graph.



Given the small power consumption you do not need to worry about having a powerful PSU when using this card. Even the cheapest low quality unit should be able to deliver the required power. However, compared to the power consumption of NVIDIA, ATI still needs more power. For example, the 7600 GT is considerably faster than the X1650 Pro, yet it consumes less power.