Legit Video Card Reviews

AMD Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition & 7850 Video Card Review

Manufacturer: AMD
Product: Radeon HD 7870 & 7850
Date: Sun, Mar 04, 2012 - 11:05 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 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 1.9.2 at 640x480 resolution. We also ran the game HAWX 2 and looped the benchmark three times and recorded the highest Wattage seen on the meter. 

Total System Power Consumption Results

Power Consumption Results: The AMD Radeon HD 7850 barely broke 253 Watts at load even with Furmark running and was able to idle at just 93 Watts (long idle with ZeroCore was 83 Watts). This card has a typical board power of ~130 Watts and is a good call for someone looking for an energy efficient card with just a single 6-pin video card power connector. The AMD Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition was found to use 2 more Watts at idle and 34 Watts more at full load.

The AMD Radeon HD 7000 series has impressive board power numbers and you can see what AMD claims as the typical board power is in the table below.
  Maximum Board Power
Typical Board Power
Long Idle Power
Radeon HD 7970
250W
~230W
<3W
 Radeon HD 7950
 200W
~180W
 <3W
 Radeon HD 7870
  -  ~175W  <3W
 Radeon HD 7850
 -
  ~130W  <3W
 Radeon HD 7770
  100W  ~80W  <3W
 Radeon HD 7750
 75W
 ~55W  <3W

AMD has stopped using maximum board power ratings for video cards and is only giving typical board power ratings. AMD wouldn't give us the maximum board power ratings even after asking for them, so based off the power connectors we know the Radeon HD 7850 won't pull more than 150 Watts and the Radeon HD 7870 GHz edition tops out at 225 Watts. Based off the Radeon HD 7950 numbers we would guess that the Radeon HD 7870 tops out around 195 Watts.

Next Page - Temperature & Noise Testing


Review Index
Page 1 - AMD Unleashes Pitcairn - Radeon HD 7800 Series
Page 2 - Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition Up Close
Page 3 - Test System
Page 4 - Batman: Arkham City
Page 5 - Battlefield 3
Page 6 - Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Page 7 - DiRT 3
Page 8 - H.A.W.X. 2
Page 9 - Just Cause 2
Page 10 - Metro 2033
Page 11 - 3DMark 11
Page 12 - Power Consumption
Page 13 - Temperature & Noise Testing
Page 14 - Overclocking The Radeon HD 7850 & 7870
Page 15 - Final Thoughts and Conclusions