Radeon HD 7970 Overclock Guide

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Power Consumption

Power Consumption

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

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.

Our test system is based on a power hungry Core i7 965 Extreme Quad Core  / 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).

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

Measured power consumption overclocked at 1125 MHz

  1. System in IDLE = 163W
  2. System Wattage with GPU in FULL Stress = 398W
  3. Difference (GPU load) = 226W
  4. Add average IDLE wattage ~9W
  5. Subjective obtained GPU power consumption = ~ 229 Watts

Mind you that the system wattage is measured at the wall socket. 229 Watt confirms our findings that we nicely stay within the ~260 Power limitation.

Power consumption  TDP in KWh KWh price 2 hrs day 4 hrs day
Graphics card measured TDP 0,229 0,23 0,11 0,21
         
Cost 5 days per week / 4 hrs day 1,05      
Cost per Month 4,56      
Cost per Year 5 days week / 4 hrs day / 54,78      
Cost per Year 5 days week / 4 hrs day / $ $ 72,31      

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

Radeon HD 7970 Overclocking

Above, a chart of relative power consumption. Again the Wattage shown is the card with the GPU(s) stressed 100%, showing only the peak GPU power draw, not the power consumption of the entire PC and not the average gaming power consumption.

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