Tephras wrote:Maybe if more review sites would put some effort in putting together their own measurement devices we could have more VGA power consumption measurements as those provided by
X-bit labs.
I'm sorry, I just don't buy words. In no way am I saying X-bit Labs is misleading or not to be trusted, but I just don't think that their method of testing is complete. I'm not saying mine is either.
There are MANY connectors on the PCI-E slot and in order to test all of these leads would tend to be cumbersome and not easy at all.
Remember that the PCI-E slot, the last time I checked, allowed up to 75W of power. Based off of that chart, the PSU would only need to provide up to an additional 40W at best for a high-end card, mainly the new x1xxx series. Rubbish.
My card is required to have the connector, even in non overclocked, standard 12 pipeline mode. It's equivilent to an X800XL in terms of power usage in that mode.
My PSU is supposed to allow a whole 75W per card (150W in SLI) per card, and one company was asking to up that total power to 150W per PSU connector.
For X-Bit's power usage to be correct, I don't even see the need for a power connector until now, much less a year ago when it first came out. Real world, however, is much different.
As for the external connector, that's easy enough. Just measure the wire connections.
I would need to see a picture of their test bed to actually support that they are doing it the best way possible. Again, not saying they couldn't do it, but just want to make sure they are actually measuring only that PCI slot, and all available power going into that slot.