HD 2900XT power consumption

Tzupy · Post by **Tzupy** » Sun May 13, 2007 12:45 pm

According to this review at vr-zone, at load it draws 17W more than a 8800 GTX: http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=4946&s=9
There is a rumor that newer drivers (8.38 beta IIRC) are improving the performance, raising it close ot 8800 GTX level.

Tzupy · Post by **Tzupy** » Mon May 14, 2007 2:37 am

Here is a link to the power consumption results at guru3d, it says 29W more than a 8800 Ultra:
http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/431/13/
The cooler alone uses 25W when operating at 100%!

The exhauted air must be scorching!
Oh, and the card is VERY noisy. So it's a nono for SPCR folk...

Tzupy · Post by **Tzupy** » Mon May 14, 2007 3:41 am

Here you can see the Fujikura-made heatsink of the HD2900XT: http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=4971
So instead of a solid base it has a vapour chamber that contacts the heatpipes?
If the vapour chamber would have the heatpipes directly connected it would work better. But that is patented AFAIK.

kater · Post by **kater** » Mon May 14, 2007 6:38 am

Here's a table showing power consumption of the whole rig at the wall:

Red is load, grey is idle. The rig is X6800 @ 2.93, 2 GB RAM, 1 HDD, TrioPower 550. Go do your math

Here's what it sounds like:

Ambient is 42, red is load, grey is idle. Sure, these are just ballpark figures, and the 10 cm distance thing is plain funny, but it kinda confirms it's not a card for SPCR readers. As if power consumption didn't mean a thing

Pics courtesy of PCLab.pl

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Mon May 14, 2007 8:55 pm

lol!

that SUX!

jeez. well, so much for r600, we all should wait for r650 like i said in another post. (65nm, new process tech as well)

Slaugh · Post by **Slaugh** » Tue May 15, 2007 10:44 pm

Matbe has an interesting article on the Radeon HD2900XT (translated).

Power consumption:

Temperatures:

Noise levels:

continuum · Post by **continuum** » Wed May 16, 2007 12:22 am

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/ ... re_14.html

http://www.xbitlabs.com/misc/picture/?s ... ll.gif&1=1

Video card only, not the whole system: 71.7W at idle, 75.8W peak 2D, 161.1W peak 3D per Xbit labs.

By comparison an 8800GTX peak 3D is 131.5W.

Ackelind · Post by **Ackelind** » Wed May 16, 2007 1:25 am

This means that you should go out and buy a 2900XT if you want a card that consumes more power, while perforiming less? I want one! [/irony]

The only reason to buy this would be if it was significally cheaper, but I doubt it.

Tzupy · Post by **Tzupy** » Wed May 16, 2007 2:32 am

Rumor is that the 80 nm process at TSMC is leaky, and some HD2900XT chips are even leakier than others.
Which could mean that one may be lucky to draw only 20W more than a 8800GTX, or unlucky with 40W more...
Not related to heat and noise, I believe that in order to improve performance the shaders for each game - and not just standard driver parts - will have to be rewritten.
The reason is that the shader performance is differently balanced compared to the 8800 GTX, so if the existing games are using shaders optimized for 8800 GTX, then they will underperform on HD2900XT. Of course, this may lead to image differences between the two cards.