Legit Video Card Reviews

Diamond, Sapphire & XFX AMD Radeon HD 6870 Video Card Roundup

Manufacturer: XFX
Product: Radeon HD 6870 (Barts XT)
Date: Mon, Nov 01, 2010 - 12:00 AM
Written By: Nathan Kirsch -
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Power Consumption

During our conversations with AMD on the Radeon HD 6000 series of video cards it was crystal clear that one of the goals in mind was improved performance per Watt.

AMD Radeon HD 6000 Series Performance Per Watt

AMD says they met their design goals as the AMD Radeon HD 6870 uses less power at idle and the same amount as the ATI Radeon HD 5850 at peak load. What is also interesting is that the AMD Radeon HD 6870 has slightly better performance than the Radeon HD 5850, yet has 25% less silicon in use as the die size is smaller.

For testing power consumption, we took our test system and plugged it into a Kill-A-Watt power meter. 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 1.8.2 at 1280x1024 resolution.

Total System Power Consumption Results

Power Consumption Results: The AMD Radeon HD 6870 cards that were built off the reference design were close to having the same power consumption.  Since each chip is going to have slightly different leakage the numbers will not be identical for any two video cards even if they are on the same design. We have been told that even chips from different spots on the same wafer will have very different power testing results. The Diamond Radeon HD 6870 XOC video card used the most power at load, but this makes sense as the card is factory overclocked.

Next Page - Radeon HD 6870 Overclocking With TRiXX


Review Index
Page 1 - Retail Radeon HD 6870 Video Cards Arrive!
Page 2 - Diamond Radeon HD 6870 XOC
Page 3 - Sapphire Radeon HD 6870
Page 4 - XFX Radeon HD 6870
Page 5 - The Test System
Page 6 - Aliens vs. Predator
Page 7 - Metro 2033
Page 8 - H.A.W.X. 2 Benchmark
Page 9 - 3DMark Vantage
Page 10 - Temperature Testing
Page 11 - Power Consumption
Page 12 - Radeon HD 6870 Overclocking With TRiXX
Page 13 - Final Thoughts and Conclusions