Legit Video Card Reviews

ATI Radeon HD 5870 DX11 Video Card Review

Manufacturer: AMD
Product: Radeon HD 5870
Date: Tue, Sep 22, 2009 - 11:00 PM
Written By: Nathan Kirsch -
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Power Consumption

For testing power consumption, we took our test system and plugged it into a Seasonic Power Angel. For idle numbers, we allowed the system to idle on the desktop for 15 minutes and took the reading. For load numbers we measured the peak wattage used by the system while running the OpenGL benchmark FurMark 1.7.0 at 1920x1200 resolution.

Total System Power Consumption Results

Power Consumption Results: In the last few years, power consumption is something that has become an important part of the overall package of a graphics card. AMD and NVIDIA have both taken steps to improve idle power consumption to keep power bills low since that's where most graphics cards spend their time. It's also important to remember that less power means less heat. AMD has hit a home run here with the Radeon HD 5870; coming in with the lowest idle consumption is very impressive. What's more is the idle power of 5870 in CrossFire, drawing less power than a single HD 4890 and just 18w more than a single GeForce GTX 285. Under load, the HD 5870 used just 3w more than a single GTX 285. When you consider how much the Radeon outperforms the GTX 285 you can't help but be impressed. In CrossFire, the HD 5870 system approaches 600w under full load. Keep in mind that the less GPU bottlenecked that the system is, the harder the CPU will work, thus increasing power consumption by the CPU. In simple terms, not all of the additional consumed power is going to the graphics card.

Next Page - Overclocking


Review Index
Page 1 - The World's First DX11 GPU
Page 2 - The Radeon HD 5870
Page 3 - Radeon HD 5870 With No HSF
Page 4 - The Test System
Page 5 - Batman: Arkham Asylum
Page 6 - Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood
Page 7 - Need For Speed: Shift‎
Page 8 - Resident Evil 5
Page 9 - Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X.
Page 10 - 3DMark Vantage
Page 11 - FurMark 1.7.0
Page 12 - Temperature Testing
Page 13 - Power Consumption
Page 14 - Overclocking
Page 15 - Extreme Overclocking
Page 16 - Bitstream Audio Testing
Page 17 - Final Thoughts and Conclusions