MSI AMD Radeon HD 6870 Video Card Power Consumption Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
755 words · ~3 min read
0:00
Power consumption is always a big one. So, you can see my system with the
0:04
Radeon 6870 pulls about 300 W from the
0:08
wall when I've got it under a full firm arc load. Now, what we might want to do
0:13
just for comparison's sake is fire up Prime 95. Give that CPU a little bit of
0:18
stress. So, this should represent about what kind of a power supply you should
0:22
be looking at for remember this is quite a basic system and this is an 80 plus
0:26
silver power supply. So, that's a best case scenario, but you should be using
0:30
for an SSD, a couple uh four gigs of RAM, uh quad core, this is an 875K
0:35
processor overclocked, and then a stock speed 6870. You're looking at about 400
0:41
watts from the wall. So, you want to buffer that. Make sure you got at least
0:44
kind of a 500 to 600 watt power supply,
0:47
and then scale from there accordingly to whatever else you want to add to it. So,
0:51
I'll give you some comparison numbers against the 5870 as well as the GTX 480
0:56
just so you have some context for that because remember every system is going
0:59
to be a little bit different, but uh Okay, so hold on. Let me do some quick
1:03
math here. So, and about 90%. So, we're probably pulling about 360 W from the
1:07
power supply right now. Okay, as soon as you start adding more drives and stuff,
1:10
you might see that jump up to about 400 watts. So, uh giving the power supply
1:16
some time to degrade, etc., etc. A 500
1:19
watt power supply is probably about what I'd recommend for this.
1:23
Power consumption for the 5870, as you can see, is quite a bit higher than the
1:29
6870. Now, it is a faster card, but I
1:33
don't think it's well, I guess it's pretty proportional. Remember, the 5870
1:38
and the 6870 are built using the same manufacturing process. So that means
1:43
that unlike some generational leaps, you can't just, you know, stuff twice as
1:48
many transistors into the same die size and then just call it, okay, now it's
1:52
twice as powerful. So it's not really that simple. This is more of an
1:55
evolutionary step rather than a revolutionary step. So I just wanted to
1:59
show you those power consumption numbers really quick. This is Firmark with Prime
2:03
95 running. So, with for this card, yeah, you'd need another 50 to 75 watts
2:08
of available power on your power supply, remembering that if you're me, you're
2:12
usually over buying on the power supply so that it'll run nice and quiet because
2:16
most power supplies will ramp up the fan much more aggressively past about 50 to
2:21
60% load. With Prime 95 and Firmark
2:25
running at the same time with the GTX 480, we're looking at about 550 watts
2:30
from the wall, which means that that power supply is providing about 500 W.
2:34
So, if you had a 500 W power supply with a GTX 480, a 3.8 GHz overclocked quad,
2:40
an SSD, blah blah blah, etc. about this build, then you'd be stressing it to the
2:45
max. When you're under extreme load, that fan's going to ramp right up.
2:49
really for a system like this, something like what I'm using in here, which is an
2:52
80 plus silver cougar 850 watt power
2:56
supply is a very good choice. Uh because it'll also give you the the headroom to
3:00
add another GTX 480 later on if you wanted. Although at that point, you'd
3:04
probably be pulling about 600 or so watts from the wall. And uh
3:09
yeah, even that's I guess that's fine for an 850 watt 80 plus silver power
3:12
supply. It should be all right. But ideally, as I said before, you want your
3:16
power supply doing about 50 60% duty, maybe 75% under an I, you know, an
3:21
extreme load scenario like a Firmark Plus Prime 95. I mean, how often are
3:25
you, you know, rendering video with four cores while you game, you know? So, um,
3:30
so 75% load is probably what I would target to ensure it doesn't get too
3:34
loud. Thanks for checking out my video on the heat and temperature or rather on
3:40
the power consumption of the GTX 480,
3:43
Radeon 5870 and the brand new Radeon
3:47
6870.