HD2900XT power consumption

[RangerXLT8]

IS about 62w greater than X1900XTX... My testing consisted of running 3DMark06 at Default settings and measuring amperage draw of the complete system. Remember this is DX9, and the card may not be drawing as much power as it can. The card is not overclocked at all. <I need a new PSU with the 8-pin PCIE2 connector before I can OC...

The same system with X1900XTX drew 396W from the wall during the Canyon Flight test.

With HD2900XT, Canyon Flight maxed out at 3.76A which at 122V is 458W.

This is a measure of Alternating Current so it could be plus or minus a few watt.

What this tells me is that this 510W Turbocool is running at %89 capacity if the temperature is 50C.

So really, 60W more is not that much..... I will add some screenies of 3DMark runs in a few minutes///

[gvblake22]

WOW, that is one power hungry card! Subjectively, do you think the performance and/or image quality is worth the outrageous power consumption? Are you happy with your purchase?

[RangerXLT8]

Originally Posted by gvblake22

WOW, that is one power hungry card! Subjectively, do you think the performance and/or image quality is worth the outrageous power consumption? Are you happy with your purchase?

Image quality is by far superior to X1k. Performance stomps previous generation cards. 3DMark scores with single 2900XT are about 15% higher than those of X1k Crossfire(air cooled cards). The heat is a PITA, and as OCers we have ways of dealing with it.....

Turns out, for the first few days I had the card, it was running underpowered because my PSU has one PCIE connector. The 510 Turbocool Express has no issues powering SLI, it was manufactured before SLI came about. What I did to fill the other plug was, take a 2 molex-----> PCIE adaptor. The adapter only ran ONE 12v line into the card..... So whenever running games or MArk, buzzing noises came from my case, I though perhaps it was the MB.

The other night I showed LeadHead a pic of the card and he pointed out the card was most likely underpowered because of the adapter... So I panicked and rigged up a true 2 molex ---> PCIE Adapter with three 12V lines going into the card.. I took a modular PCIE cable, cut the back-end off and attached 2 molexes.

Before:


True PCIE adapter:


Card being fully powered: