MSI AMD Radeon HD 6870 Video Card Power Consumption Linus Tech Tips
MSI AMD Radeon HD 6870 Video Card Power Consumption Linus Tech Tips
2010-10-21
power consumptions always a big one so
you can see my system with the Radeon 68
70 calls about 300 watts from the wall
when I've got it under a full fir mark
load now what we might want to do just
for comparison's sake is fire up prime95
give that CPU a little bit of stress so
this should represent about what kind of
a power supply you should be looking at
for remember this is quite a basic
system and this is an 80 plus silver
power supply so that's a best-case
scenario but you should be using for an
SSD a couple four gigs of ram quad core
this is an 8 7 5 K processor overclocked
and then a stock speed 68 70 you're
looking at about 400 watts from the wall
so you want to buffer that make sure you
got at least kind of a 500 to 600 watt
power supply and then scale from there
accordingly to whatever else you want to
add to it so I'll give you some
comparison numbers against the 5870 as
well as the GTX 480 just so you have
some context for that because remember
every systems gonna be a little bit
different but ok so hold on let me do
some quick math here so about 90 percent
so we're probably pulling about 360
watts from the power supply right now ok
as soon as you start adding more drives
and stuff you might see that bun jump up
to about 400 watts so giving the power
supply some time to degrade etc etc a
500 watt power supply is probably about
what I'd recommend for this power
consumption for the 58 70 as you can see
is quite a bit higher than the 68 70 now
it is a faster card but I don't think
it's well I guess it's pretty
proportional remember the 58 70 and the
68 70 are built using the same
manufacturing process so that means that
unlike some generational leaps you can't
just you know stuff twice as many
transistors into the same diocese and
then just call it okay now it's twice as
powerful so it's not really that simple
this is more of an evolutionary step
rather than a revolutionary step so I
just wanted to show you those power
consumption numbers really quick this is
fir mark with prime95 running so with
for this card yeah you'd need another 50
to 75 watts of available power and your
power supply remembering that if you're
me you're you
overbuying on the power supply so that
it'll run nice and quiet because most
power supplies will ramp up the fan much
more aggressively past about 50 to 60
percent load with prime95 and fur mark
running at the same time with the GTX
480 we're looking at about 550 watts
from the wall which means that that
power supply is providing about 500
watts so if you had a 500 watt power
supply with a GTX 480 at 3.8 gigahertz
overclock quad and SSD blah blah blah
etc about this build
then you'd be stressing it to the max
when you're under extreme load that fans
gonna ramp right up really for a system
like this something like what I'm using
in here which is an 80 plus silver
cougar 850 watt power supply is a very
good choice because it'll also give you
the Headroom to add another GTX 480
later on if you wanted although at that
point you'd probably be pulling about
600 or so watts from the wall and yeah
even that's I guess that's fine for any
50 watt 80 plus silver power supply
should be alright but ideally as I said
before you want your power supply doing
about 50 60 % duty maybe 75 percent
under a night you know an extreme load
scenario like affirm are not a 5 I mean
how often are you you know
rendering video with 4 corners while you
gain you know so so 75 percent load is
probably what I would target to ensure
that doesn't get too loud thanks for
checking out my video on the heat and
temperature or rather on the power
consumption of the GTX 480 radeon 58 70
and the brand new radeon 68 17
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