Power Consumption Test

Using our PROVA Power Analyzer WM-01 or "Power Thingy" as it has become quickly known as to our readers, we are now able to find out what kind of power is being used by our test system and the associated graphics cards installed. Keep in mind; it tests the complete system (minus LCD monitor, which is plugged directly into AC wall socket).

There are a few important notes to remember though; while our maximum power is taken in 3DMark06 at the same exact point, we have seen in particular tests the power being drawn as much as 10% more. We test at the exact same stage every time; therefore tests should be very consistent and accurate.

The other thing to remember is that our test system is bare minimum - only a SSD hard drive is used with a single CD ROM and minimal cooling fans.

So while the system might draw 400 watts in our test system, placing it into your own PC with a number of other items, the draw is going to be higher.

When it comes to the power draw side of things we can see that overall it's pretty good and load numbers sit around 50 - 60 watts higher than some of our reference clocked cards from AMD. While that might sound like a lot, overall we're still dealing with power draw that sits around the 450 watt mark.

On the idle side of things, though, you can see we're not as aggressive as the HD 7970 which can sit at around the 130 watt mark while the GTX 680 sits closer to the 200 watt mark.