I could tell you that Intel and AMD have moved
aggressively towards reducing the amount of power processors consume, and that
nVIDIA and AMD have largely neglected this issue if
videocard auxiliary power connectors are any indication. I could tell
you that high end videocards often draw more power than a CPU... but
you already know this.
To determine roughly how
much power the Palit 9600GT Sonic consumes, consider this. The PCI Express x16 slot provides
up to 75W power, and each additional six pin VGA power connector a further
75W.
The new eight
pin PCI Express power connector can deliver up to 225W of power. The Palit
9600GT Sonic has one 6-pin connector, so that's a potential 150W. In reality we
know the Geforce 9600GT is built on 55nm process and the card consumes about
95W.
Here's how the Palit 9600GT Sonic videocard stacks up in
real life against a couple different videocards. We have no way of directly
measuring videocard power draw, so PCSTATS will measure total system
power draw and compare that in 3D loaded (max value recorded in 3DMark06)
and idle states (at Windows desktop). The power supply used in
each test is an A-PFC compliant Seasonic S12-600W
model.
 Videocard Power Consumption - Total
System Power Draw |
| Idle at Desktop: |
Watts* |
Ranking |
| Diamond Viper Radeon HD 2900XT
CrossFire |
195 |
   |
| Asus EAX1900XTX 2DHTV/512M/A |
160 |
|
| Asus EAX1950PRO/HTDP/256M/A |
150 |
|
| MSI NX8800GTX-T2D768E |
196 |
   |
| MSI NX7950GX2-T2D1GE |
183 |
|
| MSI NX7900GTX-T2D512E |
165 |
|
| Gigabyte GV-NX76T256D-RH |
140 |
|
 Palit 9600GT Sonic 512 |
151 |
   |
| 3D Loaded: |
Watts* |
Ranking |
| Diamond Viper Radeon HD 2900XT
CrossFire |
549 |
|
| Asus EAX1900XTX 2DHTV/512M/A |
333 |
|
| Asus EAX1950PRO/HTDP/256M/A |
252 |
|
| MSI NX8800GTX-T2D768E |
345 |
|
| MSI NX7950GX2-T2D1GE |
315 |
|
| MSI NX7900GTX-T2D512E |
277 |
|
| Gigabyte GV-NX76T256D-RH |
213 |
|
| Palit 9600GT Sonic 512 |
221 |
| |
At idle, the Palit 9600GT Sonic test system draws
approximately 151W. Energy consumption jumps a lot when the videocards are
stressed under a 3D gaming load in 3DMark06. In this case, the
total system power draw for the Palit 9600GT Sonic test platform rises to a
peak of about 221W. That's a change of about 70W when this Geforce 9600GT is stressed.
Now
depending on the power supply and your system configuration, the power draw could be
very different so consider this chart as a general guideline of what to expect.
Overclocking is next.
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