The high energy consumption of gaming card is connected with their high productivity. However, an increase in the required power inevitably leads to an increase in the requirements, presented to the cooling system.
Increased energy effectiveness due to the passage to the new generation technical process, as made by AMD company in case of the 3d- card radeon HD 5800, is not always possible.
For determining the required power for new NVIDIA card, we measured values in the PCI-Express slot and in additional power connector. Thus, the corrected values correspond exclusively to the consumption of 3d- card. All measurements correspond to the rest regime.
As is evident on the first pictures, in the idle time regime (Windows vista aero, 1280x1024 pixel, 32-bit ) GTX 480 consumes 54 W. For comparison: the most productive 3d- card in the world (two-processor model ATI radeon HD5970) consumes 39 W. The single-processor model ATI radeon HD 5870 is located far above and has a triple advantage over GTX 480, consuming only 19 W.
The second picture shows average energy consumption in the test 3DMark03 nature (1280x1024 pixels, 6xAA, 16xAF). The value for Geforce GTX 480 is equal to 223 W, ATI radeon HD5970 : 178 W, ATI radeon HD 5870 : 122 W.
The peak consumption, to which corresponds the third graph, was measured as the maximum value in the test 3DMark03 nature with the same setting as above.
Values of the maximum required power are shown on the fourth picture. They are obtained in the test furmark stability test with 1280x1024 pixels and 0xAA. GTX 480 falls not only outside the declared value of 250 W, but also beyond all reasonable limits, consuming 320 W. The index of two-processor card ATI radeon HD5970 reaches 304 W, which is very close to the proclaimed value. ATI radeon HD 5870 under these conditions consumes 212 W.
Final graph estimate the power, consumed by different cards during the reproduction of video from blu-ray disk (program power DVD 9 Ultra, 1920x1200). The record holder is again NVIDIA: its result it was equal to 80 W. The card ATI radeon HD 5870 consumes in this case 40 W.
Results show that AMD upon transfer from the generation HD 4XXX to HD 5XXX was able to simultaneously increase productivity and to decrease energy consumption. It is essential to improve the ratio of productivity to power, which characterizes energy effectiveness. Related Products :
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