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TEST RESULTS CONTINUED
Power
The power consumption of an add-on video card can be estimated by comparing
the total system power draw with and without the card installed on our test system. Our results
were derived thus:
1. Power consumption of the graphics card at idle - When CPUBurn is run on a system, the video card is not stressed at all, and stays in idle mode. This is true whether the video card is integrated or an add-on PCIe 16X device. Hence, when the system power under CPUBurn with just the integrated graphics is subtracted from the system power under CPUBurn with the add-on card, we obtain the increase in idle power of the add-on card. (The actual idle power of the add-on card cannot be derived, because the integrated graphics does draw some power — we'd guess no more than a watt or two.)
2. Power consumption of the graphics card under load - The power draw of the system is measured with the add-on video card, with CPUBurn and ATITool running simultaneously. Then the power of the baseline system (with integrated graphics) running just CPUBurn is subtracted. The difference is the load power of the add-on card. (If you want to nitpick, the 1~2W power of the integrated graphics at idle should be added to this number.) Any load on
the CPU from ATITool should not skew the results, since the CPU was running at
full load in both systems.
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Power Consumption Comparison: HD 3850 vs. HD 3870
vs. 9600GT
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GPU State
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HD 3850
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HD 3870
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9600GT
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AC
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DC (Est.)
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AC
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DC (Est.)
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AC
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DC (Est.)
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Idle
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+13W
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+11W
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+20W
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+17W
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+30W
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+26W
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Load
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+64W
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55W
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+84W
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72W
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+76W
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65W*
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The Geforce 9600GT did not come even close to the Radeon HD3850 or 3870 in
idle power. When the card is sitting around doing nothing but rendering a
2D desktop, there's a fair bit of wattage being wasted.
At load, the power demand of the 9600GT was right smack in the middle between
the two ATI cards.
(*Since our results for the baseline system were arrived at with the system
fan at 7V, we used the higher power consumption reading to estimate the 9600GT's
power draw of 65W. With the system fan at 12V, when the card had better cooling,
the power draw was only 59W.)
Video Playback
The EN9600GT Silent's video playback capability was excellent. It clearly
had lower CPU usage during playback compared to the HD 3850/3870. Due to the
HD 3850's exceptionally low power consumption, however, overall system power
consumption was still lower than with the 9600GT. The more power hungry HD
3870 also edged the 9600GT for lower system power during video playback.
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Video Playback Comparison: HD 3850 vs. HD 3870
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Video Clip
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HD 3850
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HD 3870
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EN9600GT
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Mean CPU
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Peak CPU
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AC Power
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Mean CPU
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Peak CPU
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AC Power
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Mean CPU
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Peak CPU
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AC Power
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H.264
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3%
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8%
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~98W
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3%
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9%
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~105W
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2%
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7%
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~113W
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MPEG-2
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No Data
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No Data
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14%
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24%
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~118W
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WMV3
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28%
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38%
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~109W
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27%
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41%
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~118W
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15%
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30%
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~121W
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WVC1
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55%
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80%
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~125W
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50%
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78%
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~130W
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28%
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46%
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~131W
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HDMI Output
The HDMI output did not function properly with out test system. The HDMI
signal that was sent to our BenQ FP94VW was zoomed in and scaled incorrectly,
even though the driver was set to the proper resolution of 1440x900. To enable
HDMI audio, an S/PDIF cable must be connected from the graphics card to an
internal S/PDIF header on the motherboard; this is a feature that's lacking
in our test platform motherboard, so we were not able to test HDMI audio.
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