ECS GeForce GTX 560 - Graphics card Power consumption

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 05/16/2011 01:00 PM [ ] 0 comment(s)

Installation of any of the graphics cards is really easy. Once the card is seated into the PC make sure you hook up the monitor and of course any external power connectors like 6 and/or 8-pin PEG power connectors. Preferably get yourself a power supply that has these PCIe PEG connector native (converting them from a Molex Peripheral connector anno 2011 we feel is a no-go).

Download NVIDIA GeForce drivers

Once done we boot into Windows, install the latest drivers and after a reboot all should be working. No further configuration is required or needed unless you like to tweak setting, for which you can open the NVIDIA control panel.

Power Consumption

Let's have a look at how much power draw we measure with this graphics card installed.

The methodology: We have a device constantly monitoring the power draw from the PC. We simply stress the GPU, not the processor. The before and after wattage will tell us roughly how much power a graphics card is consuming under load.

Note: As of lately, there has been a lot of discussion using FurMark as stress test to measure power load. Furmark is so malicious on the GPU that it does not represent an objective power draw compared to really hefty gaming. If we take a very-harsh-on-the-GPU gaming title, then measure power consumption and then compare the very same with Furmark, the power consumption can be 50 to 100W higher on a high-end graphics card solely because of FurMark.

After long deliberation we decided to move away from Furmark and are now using a game like application which stresses the GPU 100% yet is much more representable of power consumption and heat levels coming from the GPU. We however are not disclosing what application that is as we do not want AMD/ATI/NVIDIA to 'optimize & monitor' our stress test whatsoever, for our objective reasons of course.

Our test system is based on a power hungry Core i7 965 / X58 system. This setup is overclocked to 3.75 GHz. Next to that we have energy saving functions disabled for this motherboard and processor (to ensure consistent benchmark results). On average we are using roughly 50 to 100 Watts more than a standard PC due to higher CPU clock settings, water-cooling, additional cold cathode lights etc.

We'll be calculating the GPU power consumption here, not the total PC power consumption.

Measured power consumption

System in IDLE = 147W
System Wattage with GPU in FULL Stress = 289W
Difference (GPU load) = 142W
Add average IDLE wattage ~ 20W
Subjective obtained GPU power consumption = ~ 162 Watts

Mind you that the system wattage is measured at the wall socket.

Power consumption	TDP in KWh	KWh price	2 hrs day	4 hrs day
Graphics card measured TDP	0,162	0,23	0,07	0,15

Cost 5 days per week / 4 hrs day	0,75
Cost per Month	3,23
Cost per Year 5 days week / 4 hrs day /	38,75
Cost per Year 5 days week / 4 hrs day / $	$ 51,15

We estimate and calculate here based on four hours GPU intensive gaming per day for 5 days a week with this card.

Above, a chart of relative power consumption. Again the Wattage displayed are the cards with the GPU(s) stressed 100%, showing only the GPU power draw, not the entire PC.

Here is Guru3D's power supply recommendation:

GeForce GTX 560 - On your average system the card requires you to have a 500 Watt power supply unit.

If you are going to overclock CPU or processor, then we do recommend you purchase something with some more stamina.

There are many good PSUs out there, please do have a look at our many PSU reviews as we have loads of recommended PSUs for you to check out in there. What would happen if your PSU can't cope with the load?:

bad 3D performance
crashing games
spontaneous reset or imminent shutdown of the PC
freezing during gameplay
PSU overload can cause it to break down

Let's move to the next page where we'll look into GPU heat levels and noise levels coming from this graphics card.

23 pages « < 7 8 9 10 next »

ECS GeForce GTX 560
The GeForce GTX 560 we'll review in this article comes from ECS, out of the three products GTX 560 tested today here on Guru3D.com this one is reference clocked, has a reference design and a reference cooler. So this product will be the baseline performance product. Now that does not mean a sober product contrary, baseline performance is pretty good for the money. And next to that, we all know you'll gain the most from the less expensive products one you go and tweak them.

ECS GeForce GTX 460 Black review
We review the ECS GeForce GTX 460 Black series. Within the entire scope of Fermi GPU based graphics cards from NVIDIA the GeForce GTX 460 has to be the most interesting in terms of value for money with very acceptable decent thermals and power consumption. This is why we see a lot of SKU's released for this product, with a variety of cooling and factory overclocks. ECS Elite group also release a handful of GeForce GTX 460 cards, based on the reference design, slight overclock yet also a BLACK series graphics card which is a factory overclocked model with an Arctic cooling Accelero Xtreme PRO cooler sitting on top of that GPU.

ECS GeForce GTS 250 1024MB review | test
ECS GeForce GTS 250 tested -- Today the turn goes to the folks at ECS. Ever since the past year or two they have been trying hard to get a grip in the e-tail and retail channel, and as a brand they certainly are growing. With a creative product design and marketing team they present us some fairly special designs and concepts. Today's product tested is not at all different. Though we'll stubble into a reference clocked product, there is very little little reference otherwise.

ECS GeForce 9800 GTX+ Hydra SLI
A review on the ECS GeForce 9800 GTX+ Hydra SLI. Basically you'll receive two pre-modified GeForce 9800 GTX+ products and a water-cooling kit that is supplied by Thermaltake. It's in fact the Thermaltake big water series that you can slide into you 5.25"drive bay easily. Pretty much the only thing you need to do is connect four tubing connections, fill her up, connect some wiring ... and you are good to go. That's 15 minutes tops to get a gaming performance level better than the GeForce GTX 280.